Composite Gazetteer of Australia

<div>The Composite Gazetteer of Australia (CGA) is the national repository of Australia’s approved place names, drawing together data from each state, territory, and relevant Commonwealth authorities. It is the place names point database that is used by the CGA web application, https://placenames.fsdf.org.au, to deliver jurisdictional place name information as one collection. The CGA is collaborative effort - every Australian state and mainland territory provides data from its official register of geographic names, administered by its naming authority (e.g. VICNAMES in Victoria, the NSW Geographical Names Board, etc). In addition, the Australian Hydrographic Office (AHO) contributes offshore undersea feature names, and the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) provides Antarctic place names. All data provided for the CGA is managed by respective naming authorities.</div><div> </div><div>Over decades, it has evolved through collaborative governance and technical innovation. The effort is coordinated under the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM), through its Australia and New Zealand Place Names Working Group (ANZPNWG), formerly Permanent Committee on Place Names (PCPN) or its predecessor, Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia (CGNA).</div><div> </div><div>The database is also available to search and direct download from the web application, currently https://placenames.fsdf.org.au.</div><div><br></div><div>The spatial accuracy of the place names points varies between jurisdictions and cannot be relied upon for navigation, precise positioning, or safety-of-life applications. Any quality issues with individual data points should be referred to the relevant naming authority.</div>

Identification info

Date (Creation): 2025-10-16T11:00:00

Date (Publication): 2025-11-25T06:31:58.427Z

Citation identifier: Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/150710

Cited responsible party

Role	Organisation / Individual Name	Details
Publisher	Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)	Voice
Author	Carter, L.	Internal Contact

Purpose: To deliver an extra layer of product for the Composite Gazetteer of Australia in conjunction with the Composite Gazetteer of Australia web site, https://placenames.fsdf.org.auThis has been a request in client feedback in the past.

Status: Completed

Point of contact

Role	Organisation / Individual Name	Details
Resource provider	Place and Communities Division	External Contact
Point of contact	Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)	Voice
Point of contact	Carter, L.	Internal Contact

Spatial representation type

Topic category

Geoscientific information

Extent

Maintenance and update frequency: As needed

Resource format

Title: Product data repository: Various Formats

Protocol: FILE:DATA-DIRECTORY

Name of the resource: Data Store directory containing the digital product files

Description: Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes

Keywords

gazetteer

Keywords

place names

Keywords

Australia

Keywords

Composite Gazetteer of Australia

Project

CGA
ANZPNWG

theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf

Other earth sciences not elsewhere classified

Keywords

Published_External

Resource constraints

Addressee

Role	Organisation / Individual Name	Details
User	Any

Use constraints: License

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2025

Resource constraints

Title: Australian Government Security Classification System

Edition date: 2018-11-01T00:00:00

Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/pspf-annual-release

Classification: Unclassified

Classification system: Australian Government Security Classification System

Associated resource

Association Type: Operated on by

Title: Composite Gazetteer of Australia MapServer

Website

Associated resource

Association Type: Operated on by

Title: Composite Gazetteer of Australia WFS

Website

Associated resource

Association Type: Operated on by

Title: Composite Gazetteer of Australia WMS

Website

Language: English

Character encoding: UTF8

Distribution Information

OnLine resource: Link to Composite Gazetteer of Australia web site

Link to Composite Gazetteer of Australia web site

OnLine resource: Composite Gazetteer of Australia Mapserver

Composite Gazetteer of Australia Mapserver

Distribution format

ESRI Map Service

OnLine resource: Composite Gazetteer of Australia WMS

Composite Gazetteer of Australia WMS

Distribution format

OGC WMS

OnLine resource: Composite Gazetteer of Australia WFS

Composite Gazetteer of Australia WFS

Distribution format

OGC WFS

Distribution Information

Distributor contact

Role	Organisation / Individual Name	Details
Distributor	Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)	Voice

Resource lineage

Statement: <div><br></div><div>This data is linked to (a copy of) the database, held in cloud storage, that is updated directly by jurisdictions and available from the Composite Gazetteer of Australia web application, https://placenames.fsdf.org.au. It replaces any previous version of the Gazetteer of Australia.</div><div> </div><div>The CGA’s data integration and delivery is a cloud-based platform, which was originally developed for national elevation data (the ELVIS portal). This platform supports direct data ingestion via web services and files, on-the-fly processing, and user-friendly web mapping for visualisation. It also includes an upload and quality assurance module, allowing data contribution directly through the portal with built-in validation checks. No manual intervention by the platform operator, Geoscience Australia, is needed when a jurisdiction uploads new data (or potentially, connects a feed), the system validates it and integrates it into the CGA automatically, typically within a day.</div><div> </div><div>Several jurisdictions have shifted to providing machine-readable feeds for integration. For example, Victoria offers Vicmap as a Service (VaaS), which exposes Victoria’s foundational spatial data (including place names) as standard web services and APIs for real-time access. Through VaaS, the Victorian place names database is seamlessly integrated into the national system via near real-time web feature services. Similar web service endpoints or automated data drops are being used or explored by other states as well, moving away from manual file exchanges. This approach, sometimes referred as 'live' links to jurisdictional databases, ensures that the CGA reflects the latest official names e.g. new suburb names or changed feature names, soon after they are approved in each state.</div><div><br></div><div>Each jurisdiction or naming authority controls the frequency and method of its data updates. Naming authorities can provide new or updated names on their schedule (some do weekly or monthly pushes, others quarterly) through an aggregation portal. This flexibility respects different internal workflows while ensuring that the composite is continually up-to-date for all of Australia and visible in a national context. </div><div> </div><div>The spatial accuracy of the place names points varies between jurisdictions and cannot be relied upon for navigation, precise positioning, or safety-of-life applications. Any quality issues with individual data points should be referred to the relevant naming authority.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div>

Reference System Information

Reference system identifier: EPSG/GDA94 / geographic 2D (EPSG: 4283)

Metadata constraints

Title: Australian Government Security Classification System

Edition date: 2018-11-01T00:00:00

Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/pspf-annual-release

Classification: Unclassified

Metadata

Metadata identifier

urn:uuid/f91a52b3-26f6-4f2c-bb8e-520f40864d5b

Title: GeoNetwork UUID

Language: English

Character encoding: UTF8

Contact

Role	Organisation / Individual Name	Details
Point of contact	Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)	Voice
Point of contact	Carter, L.	Internal Contact

Type of resource

Resource scope: Dataset

Alternative metadata reference

Title: Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with uuid

Citation identifier: eCatId/150710

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/api/records/f91a52b3-26f6-4f2c-bb8e-520f40864d5b

Date info (Creation): 2025-12-15T06:05:05.448Z

Date info (Creation): 2025-11-25T06:32:26.414Z

Date info (Creation): 2025-10-16T01:06:33.932Z

Date info (Revision): 2025-12-15T06:14:24.583Z

Metadata standard

Title: AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title: ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title: ISO 19115-3

Title: Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition: Version 2.0, September 2018

Citation identifier: https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551

Spatial extent

Provided by

Access to the portal

Read here the full details and access to the data.

Associated resources

Not available

Simple

Identification info

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Associated resource

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Distribution Information

Distribution Information

Resource lineage

Reference System Information

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Metadata

Type of resource

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