Most Australian address tools are built on the same foundation: G-NAF, the Geocoded National Address File. It is one of the country's most useful pieces of open data, and it is also widely misunderstood. Knowing what it does and does not tell you is the difference between choosing the right tool and buying the wrong one.
What G-NAF is
G-NAF is Australia's authoritative index of physical addresses, each paired with geographic coordinates. It is published by Geoscape Australia, released as open data through data.gov.au, and updated quarterly. It covers around 16.9 million current, geocoded addresses, which is why the address your customer needs is almost always in the list.
That makes it excellent for the three jobs most forms need, and the three WattleAddr does:
- Autocomplete, suggesting a real address as someone types
- Verify and standardise, matching free text to a canonical record with clean components
- Geocode, returning latitude and longitude for maps, routing and service areas
What G-NAF is not
Here is the part the marketing around address data usually skips. G-NAF tells you that an address exists and where it is. It does not tell you whether Australia Post will deliver mail there, or whether the premises is currently occupied.
Postal deliverability is a separate, certified thing. If your use case is a mail house sending physical letters at volume, you need Australia Post's addressing products (AMAS, PAF), which certify deliverability, and G-NAF on its own is not that. We are deliberately not a mail-deliverability service, and we would rather tell you plainly than have you discover it after integrating.
Why the honesty helps you
For the vast majority of applications, checkouts, signups, bookings, CRM data entry, what you actually need is a correct, structured address with coordinates, captured with as little typing and as few errors as possible. That is exactly what G-NAF is built for, and exactly what WattleAddr delivers. You only need the postal-certification products if you are physically mailing at scale. Matching the tool to the job saves you from paying for capabilities you will never use.
G-NAF tells you an address exists and where it is. It does not certify that mail is deliverable there. Pick the tool that matches the job.
Kept current, and kept onshore
WattleAddr reloads each quarterly G-NAF release, so the data stays current, and serves it entirely from Australian infrastructure, so lookups never leave the country. Address identifiers can change between releases, so if you store an address, keep the components and formatted value rather than relying on an identifier alone.
WattleAddr incorporates or is derived from G-NAF, © Geoscape Australia, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Explore it at wattleaddr.com.au.