1996 CENSUS OF POPULATION AND HOUSING
FACT SHEET 13
POSTAL AREA ALLOCATION ALTERNATIVES
Postal Areas are formed by aggregating whole collection districts (CDs) that fall within the physical boundaries of a postcode on a best fit basis. This series excludes non-mappable Australia Post postcodes e.g. post office box only postcodes, some postcodes which are delivery routes which are also covered by other postcodes (a situation which often occurs in rural areas), and some postcodes which, because of the application of the 'best fit' principle, do not get a CD allocated to them.
When creating Postal Areas it is sometimes difficult to match CDs to Australia Post Postcodes. This is primarily because post codes are designed to distribute mail and not for disseminating statistics. This fact causes a number of problems in generating POAs. The problems encountered when choosing which CDs belonged in which postcodes when generating the POA classification included:
1) where Postcodes did not match with CD boundaries (quite common);
2) where the area covered by Postcodes overlapped. For example, a person may live in a particular postcode but may collect their mail from a post box with a different postcode or have special arrangements with Post Offices for mail delivery (common in rural areas); and
3) where detailed, up to date post code information was not readily available.
Since the initial release of POAs, more up to date information has been received which can make the CD/POA concordance much clearer. The listing below is provided for clients information. It shows those CDs that were allocated to a particular 1996 Census POA as well as showing an alternative Postal Area that the CD could have been allocated to. Standard census statistical output are only available for 1996 Census POAs and not on this alternative listing.
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