Postal Area (POA)
The ABS's version of a postcode, built from mesh blocks so Census figures can be published by postcode. Postal Areas only cover postcodes where people live, so PO box and business-only postcodes aren't included.
What a Postal Area is
Australia Post's postcodes exist to deliver mail, not to publish statistics, and they don't come with neat boundaries. The ABS approximates each one by assigning every mesh block to the postcode that most of its residents fall in. The result is a set of more than 2,600 Postal Areas covering the whole country.
Postal Areas are fixed for each edition of the ABS boundaries. Changes Australia Post makes to postcodes in the meantime don't show up until the next edition, five years later.
What's left out
- PO box and business postcodes. Postcodes that aren't street delivery areas, such as those for PO boxes or large mail receivers, have no Postal Area, because nobody lives in them.
- A few small postcodes. Where no mesh block can be allocated to a postcode, it doesn't get a Postal Area.
- Names. Postal Areas have no official names, only the four-digit number.
Postcodes, suburbs and councils
A postcode often covers several suburbs, some suburbs are split between postcodes, and postcodes cut across council boundaries. A few even cross state borders, mostly along the Murray between Victoria and New South Wales. Postcode figures and suburb figures describe different groups of people, even when the names overlap.
When to use postcodes
Postal Areas are most useful when your own data is by postcode: customer addresses, loyalty members or sales by delivery postcode. Matching it to Census figures for the same postcodes lets you work out penetration, such as customers for every thousand households.
If you're starting from scratch, suburbs or SA2s are usually better. Postcodes vary enormously in size and were drawn for delivering mail, not for analysis.
Postcodes in Censible
Censible uses the 2026 Postal Areas. Type a four-digit postcode and it comes up first, with the main suburbs inside it listed underneath, so you can tell which area you're looking at.
Source: ABS, Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Edition 4, Postal Areas.
Suburbs and Localities (SAL)
The ABS's approximation of officially recognised suburbs and localities, built from mesh blocks. It replaced State Suburbs (SSC) from the 2021 Census.
Local Government Area (LGA)
LGA stands for Local Government Area: the area a local council looks after. In ABS data, LGAs are the ABS's version of council boundaries, built from small mesh blocks so Census figures can be published for every council in Australia.
Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2)
A medium-sized area defined by the ABS to represent a community that interacts socially and economically. Most have between 3,000 and 25,000 residents.
Mesh block
The smallest area in the ABS's boundaries, designed where possible to hold 30 to 60 dwellings and tagged with a broad land use. The ABS releases only population and dwelling counts for mesh blocks, and builds every larger area, including councils, suburbs and postcodes, from them.
Geocoding
Converting an address into map coordinates, so a record can be placed on a map and assigned to areas such as mesh blocks, suburbs or SA2s. Reverse geocoding goes the other way, from a point to its nearest address.
Questions people ask
Postal Area: the ABS's approximation of a postcode, used to publish Census figures by postcode.
No. A postcode often covers several suburbs, and some suburbs are split between postcodes. The ABS publishes figures for both, as Postal Areas and Suburbs and Localities.
It may be a postcode used only for PO boxes or business mail, which has no residents and so no Postal Area. Try the postcode of the street address instead.
Not exactly. They're built from mesh blocks, so edges can differ from Australia Post's delivery areas, and they're only updated every five years.