Height Above Sea Level in Australia
Free elevation finder for every Australian postcode: type a postcode, tap the map, or use your location to check the elevation in metres or feet.
Find the height above sea level at any point in Australia. Type a postcode for an instant reading, tap anywhere on the map, or use your current location. Results come from Geoscience Australia's national 30-metre elevation model, the smoothed DEM-S surface, and everything loads as map tiles processed on your device: no account, no lookup service, nothing sent anywhere except fetching the map itself. Elevations are shown in metres with a feet toggle.
Why check your elevation
For most of the world, elevation is about mountains. In Australia it's about water. The continent is the flattest inhabited continent on Earth, and most of us live within a short drive of the coast, on floodplains, river deltas and low-lying coastal suburbs where a few metres of height are the difference between a property that stays dry and one that doesn't.
That's why elevation matters here in practical ways: flood risk on a property you're buying or renting, what a 1-in-100-year flood level means for a specific block, how exposed a low-lying suburb is to storm surge and king tides, and why two streets in the same postcode can carry very different insurance premiums. Councils publish flood studies and insurers run their own models, but the starting fact underneath all of them is simply how high the land sits, and that's what this map shows.
It's not only about water. Elevation shapes summer temperatures, frost risk for growers, mobile and radio reception, bushfire behaviour on slopes, and whether that hill on your morning ride is really as bad as it feels. Check any postcode, compare a few, and you'll read the landscape differently.
How to use this elevation finder
Type an Australian postcode for an instant reading from our postcode lookup table, or tap anywhere on the map to fetch that spot's elevation tile and decode it on your device. The Use My Location button does the same for wherever you're standing. Switch the m/ft toggle above the result to change units, and use Copy Link to share the exact point you've checked - the location is encoded in the page's URL, so anyone who opens your link lands on the same spot.
Who uses this tool?
Check how high a block sits before you buy or sign, and compare streets within the same suburb.
Understand why elevation shows up in flood maps and premium calculations, and see your own number.
Compare climbs, check summit heights, and settle arguments about whose hill is steeper.
Frost drains downhill; elevation helps explain why one paddock burns and another doesn't.
Fast site checks for elevation, drainage falls, and datum sanity-checks.
Find the highest point in your suburb, or check whether your town really is above the reservoir.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate are these elevation readings?
Readings come from Geoscience Australia's 1-second (about 30-metre) smoothed elevation model. On flat and rolling ground, where most Australians live, readings are typically within a few metres of surveyed values. On steep peaks the smoothing can read low, sometimes by tens of metres at sharp summits, so treat mountain-top readings as approximate. For legal, engineering or survey purposes, use a licensed surveyor.
How is height above sea level defined in Australia?
In Australia, height above sea level is measured against the Australian Height Datum (AHD), the national reference set from two years of mean sea level readings at 30 tide gauges around the coast. Adopted in 1971, AHD is the standard used across mainland Australia, so 0m AHD is close to, but not identical with, local mean sea level at any single point on the coast.
Which areas are covered?
Mainland Australia and Tasmania. External territories, Norfolk Island, Christmas Island, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and Lord Howe Island, sit outside the national dataset, and the tool says so honestly rather than guessing.
Can I check flood risk with this tool?
Elevation is the foundation of flood risk but not the whole of it: flow paths, catchment behaviour and local drainage matter too. Use this map to understand how high the land sits, then check your council's published flood studies for property-level risk.
Why does my postcode show one number when my suburb has hills?
Postcode readings are taken at that postcode's centre point (its centroid), a single representative location for an area that might span several kilometres and plenty of hills. Tap the map at your exact street or address for a precise reading instead.
Is this free, and where does the data come from?
Yes, completely free, with no account required. Elevation data is Geoscience Australia's SRTM-derived 1 Second DEM-S, © Geoscience Australia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, processed into map tiles we host ourselves.
Related Tools
More Australian mapping tools:
- Dark Sky Finder - check light pollution and find dark sky sites
- Crow-Flies Distance - straight-line distance between two Australian places
- Radius Map - draw a radius circle around any Australian location