Postal Areas (POAs)

Fetch ASGS geometries for the Postal Areas (POAs) geography.

Usage

poa(
  identifier = NULL,
  edition = NULL,
  reference_date = NULL,
  layer = c("gen", "full", "point"),
  where = NULL,
  filter_geom = NULL,
  predicate = c("intersects", "contains", "crosses", "overlaps", "touches", "within"),
  cache = getOption("ozgs.cache"),
  ...
)

Arguments

identifier

An optional character vector of named features to download from the specified geography. For most ASGS geographies, these are human-friendly names like e.g. "Tasmania" (a feature within the STE geography), "Sydney" (a feature within the LGA geography) or "2150" (a feature within the POA geography). If specified, identifier takes precedence over where. If neither identifier nor where are specified, all of the features in the specified geography will be downloaded.

edition

An ASGS edition: 1, 2, or 3.

reference_date

The geography's year of release. For most geographies, reference_year is optional and specifying an edition will be sufficient. However, for LGAs, CEDs and SEDs, the ASGS contains multiple releases per edition. For these geographies, a reference_date must be supplied to uniquely identify a release.

layer

One of:

• "gen", the default. Fetches simplified geometries that have been generalised to 0.000025° or 2.5m.

• "full", full ASGS geometries. Identical to ASGS Shapefile and Geopackage downloads.

• "point", point geometries for each records in a geography.

where

An optional SQL WHERE clause to filter the features returned by the request. Ignored if identifier is specified.

filter_geom

An optional sf::sfc or single sf geometry to filter the records returned by the request.

predicate

An optional spatial predicate to specify the relation between filter_geom and geography. One of "intersects", "contains", "crosses", "overlaps", "touches", and "within".

cache

A cachem-compatible cache. If not otherwise specified, defaults to a memory cache. To persistently store downloaded ASGS geometries and data, supply an object created by cachem::cache_disk().

...

Additional arguments passed to arcgislayers::arc_read().

Details

Postal Areas (POAs) are an ABS Mesh Block approximation of a general definition of postcodes. A postcode is a four digit number used by Australia Post to assist with mail delivery. Postcodes cover most, but not all, of Australia whereas Postal Areas cover the whole of geographic Australia. Please note that ABS approximated boundaries do not match official legal or administrative boundaries and should only be used for statistical purposes. Further information about these regions can be found in the following publication: Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Edition 3 https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/standards/australian-statistical-geography-standard-asgs-edition-3/jul2021-jun2026

Availability

The following combinations of ASGS edition and reference_date are available:

geography	edition	reference_date
POA	1	2011
POA	2	2016
POA	3	2021