Postcodes in Australia – Wikipedia

australian postcodes have four digits ; many envelopes for posting within Australia have four square boxes, one for each finger of the zip code. Postcodes in Australia are used to more efficiently sort and road mail within the australian postal system. Postcodes in Australia have four digits and are placed at the end of the Australian address, before the country. Postcodes were introduced in Australia in 1967 by the Postmaster-General ‘s Department and are now managed by Australia Post, Australia ‘s national postal service. Postcodes are published in booklets available from mail offices or on-line from the Australia Post web site.

australian envelopes and postcards frequently have four square boxes printed in orange at the bottomland right for the zip code. These are used to assist with the automatize sorting of mail that has been addressed by hand for australian delivery .

history [edit ]

Postcodes were introduced in Australia in 1967 by the Postmaster-General ‘s Department ( PMG ) to replace earlier postal sorting systems, such as Melbourne ‘s letter and count codes ( for example, N3, E5 ) and a exchangeable system then used in rural and regional New South Wales. The initiation of the postcodes coincided with the introduction of a large-scale mechanical mail sorting system in Australia, [ 1 ] starting with the Sydney GPO. By 1968, 75 % of mail was using postcodes, and in the same year post agency preferred-size envelopes were introduced, [ 1 ] which came to be referred to as “ standard envelopes ”. Postcode squares were introduced in June 1990 [ 2 ] to enable Australia Post to use ocular character recognition ( OCR ) software in its mail sorting machines to mechanically and more promptly sort chain mail by postcodes .

format [edit ]

australian postcodes consist of four digits, [ 3 ] and are written after the name of the city, suburb, or township, and the express or territory :

recipient role Name
100 Citizen Road
BLACKTOWN NSW 2148

When writing an address by hand, and a course of four boxes is pre-printed on the lower right corner of an envelope, the zip code may be written in the boxes rather. When posting to an administration, business names can be written alternatively of a recipient role mention. If an article is intended for a specific identity within an organization, their identity can be prepended on the occupation above the business diagnose, with c/- prepended to the business name. If addressing a letter from external Australia, the zip code is recorded before ‘Australia ‘, which is placed on a one-fourth occupation .

geography [edit ]

australian postcodes are sorting information. They are frequently linked with one area ( e.g. 6160 belongs merely to Fremantle, Western Australia ). ascribable to postcode rationalization, they can be quite complex, specially in nation areas ( e.g. 2570 belongs to twenty-two towns and suburbs around Camden, New South Wales ). The south-western Victoria 3221 zip code of the Geelong Mail Centre besides includes twenty places around Geelong with very few people. This means that chain mail for these places is not amply sorted until it gets to Geelong. [ citation needed ] Some postcodes cover big populations ( for example, zip code 4350 serving some 100,000 people in Toowoomba and the surrounding area ), while early postcodes have much smaller populations, even in urban areas. australian postcodes range from 0200 for the australian National University ( nowadays 2601 ) to 9944 for Cannonvale, Queensland. Some towns and suburbs have two postcodes — one for street deliveries and another for post position boxes. For case, a street address in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta would be written like this :

Mr John Smith

99 George Street

PARRAMATTA NSW 2150

But mail sent to a PO Box in Parramatta would be addressed :

Mr John Smith

PO Box 99

PARRAMATTA NSW 2124

many big businesses, government departments and other institutions receiving high volumes of mail had their own zip code as a Large Volume Receiver ( LVR ), e.g. the Royal Brisbane and Women ‘s Hospital has the zip code 4029, the australian National University had the zip code 0200. More zip code ranges were made available for LVRs in the 1990s. Australia Post has been increasingly discontinuing the LVR course of study since 2006. [ citation needed ]

Places without postcodes [edit ]

Some places in Australia do not have postcodes. These are typically outside areas with little or no population .

allotment [edit ]

australian states and territories [edit ]

The first one or two numbers normally show the state or district that the zip code belongs to [ 4 ] 2-digit zip code areas of Australia
sometimes near the state and district borders, Australia Post finds it easier to send mail through a nearby post office that is across the border :

Some of the postcodes above may cover two or more states. For example, zip code 2620 covers both a vicinity in NSW ( Gundaroo ) american samoa well as a vicinity in the ACT ( Hume ), and zip code 0872 covers a count of localities across WA, SA and NT. Three locations ( Mingoola, [ 5 ] Mungindi [ 6 ] and Texas [ 7 ] ) straddle the NSW-Queensland boundary line ( therefore same township appoint and zip code on both sides ).

Jervis Bay Territory, once an exclave of the ACT but immediately a separate territory, is geographically located on the coast of NSW. It is barely south of the towns of Vincentia and Huskisson, with which it shares a zip code. mail to the Jervis Bay Territory is still addressed to the ACT. The numbers used to show the state on each radio callsign in Australia are the like number as the first issue for postcodes in that state, e.g. 2xx in New South Wales, 3xx in Victoria, etc. Radio callsigns pre-date postcodes in Australia by more than forty years.

external territories [edit ]

Australia ‘s external territories are besides included in Australia Post ‘s zip code system. While these territories do not belong to any submit, they are addressed as such for mail screen :

Three scientific bases in Antarctica operated by the australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions parcel a zip code with the isolate sub-Antarctic island of Macquarie Island ( part of Tasmania ) :

There is besides a “ especial ” zip code for routing mail sent to Santa

state and territory capital cities [edit ]

Each country ‘s capital city ends with three zeroes, while territorial capital cities end with two zeroes. Capital city postcodes were the lowest postcodes in their state or territory roll, before new ranges for LVRs and PO Boxes were made available. The last number can normally be changed from “ 0 ” to “ 1 ” to get the zip code for General Post Office boxes in any capital city ( though Perth now uses a unlike roll of postcodes for its GPO Boxes ) :

Allocation within states [edit ]

While the beginning phone number of a zip code normally shows the state or district, the moment number normally shows a region within the state of matter. however, postcodes with the same second number are not always next to each early. As an exercise, postcodes in the scope 2200–2299 are split between the southern suburbs of Sydney and the Central Coast, Lake Macquarie and Newcastle regions of New South Wales. Postcodes with a irregular number of “ 0 ” or “ 1 ” are about constantly located within the metropolitan area of the state ‘s capital city. Postcodes with higher second numbers are normally located in rural and regional areas. common exceptions are where towns were rural when postcodes were foremost introduced in 1967, but have since been suburbanised and incorporated into metropolitan areas, e.g. Penrith, New South Wales has the zip code 2750 and Petrie, Queensland has the zip code 4502. Within each region with the like second number, postcodes are normally allocated in ascending order the far one travels from the state ‘s capital city along major highways and railways. For exemplify, heading north on the North Coast railroad track in New South Wales away from Sydney :

major towns and cities [edit ]

major towns and cities tend to have “ 0 ” as the last number or last two numbers, e.g. Rockhampton, Queensland has the zip code 4700 and Ballarat, Victoria has the zip code 3350. There are exceptions ; the major town of Ipswich, Queensland has the zip code 4305, while Goodna, a relatively small suburb of Ipswich, is allocate 4300 .

Postcode squares [edit ]

Australia Post prefers envelopes sold in Australia to have four boxes in the bottom right corner of the front of the envelope. Entering the zip code in these boxes or squares, which Australia Post calls postcode squares, enables Australia Post to use optical character recognition software in its mail sorting machines to mechanically and more quickly sort mail into postcodes, which besides embeds routing information. zip code squares were introduced in June 1990. [ 2 ] Australia Post says that zip code squares should not be used for machine-addressed mail, or mail going abroad .

other uses [edit ]

many other organisations now use postcodes. indemnity companies often use postcodes when working out the cost of car and house indemnity. Transport for NSW uses postcodes to give specific numbers for each busbar discontinue in Greater Sydney. The barricade number is five to seven numbers : the first four are the zip code, and the others show the bus end ( sometimes written with a space in between, e.g. “ 2000 108 ” ). many companies that produce metropolitan street maps besides list the postcodes for each suburb, both in indexes and on the maps themselves. spatial representation of postcodes is besides very popular in defining sales and franchise territories. australian Bureau of Statistics, australian Taxation Office and many other Federal and State politics organisations publish a variety of statistics by zip code which extends the consumption Australia Post four digit code to many occupation and sociable planning related activities. There is an built-in trouble with spatial representation of postcodes since areas referenced to a specific postal code tend to change over prison term, as new postcodes are added or existing ones are split by Australia Post for operational purposes. [ 9 ] Some mail generating software can automatically sort outbound mail by zip code before it is generated. This pre-sort of mail into zip code order eliminates the necessitate for it to be sorted manually or using mail sorting machines.

Mechanised screen [edit ]

To improve mechanized screen, each address now has a sort issue which is printed on the letter as an orange-colored barcode. This phone number might be 12 digits hanker. This system enables the post office to place items in delivery holy order. Companies can besides use Rapid Addressing Tool ( RATS ) to print Customer Addressed Barcodes, which are printed above the address. Every delivery point in Australia ( DPID ) has its own issue. Barcode sorter machines sort and sequence letters up to C5 size. flat multi-level OCR reads, imprints and sorts C5 to A3 sized articles .

See besides [edit ]

References [edit ]