Physical map of Australia
Physical map of Australia shows the shape of the land with shaded relief and colors for elevation. Rivers and lakes are drawn in blue, and dashed lines show country borders. Download the labeled map or use the version without names as a worksheet.
How to read this map
Named features on this map include Great Dividing Range, Western Plateau, Great Artesian Basin, Nullabor Plain, Great Sandy Desert, Great Victoria Desert, Murray–Darling basin, Gibson Desert, Kimberley Plateau, Australian Alps, Flinders Ranges, Blue Mountains, Gregory Range, Selwyn Mountains, MacDonnell Ranges, Darling Range, Hamersley Range, Buckland Tableland, Barkly Tableland, Strzelecki Desert, Simpson Desert, Tanami Desert, Darling Downs, Uluru, Bluff Knoll, Mount Ossa. The terrain colors help locate these features within the surrounding lowlands, plateaus and mountain belts.
The mapped river network includes Ord, Katherine, Mitchell, Fitzroy, Daly, Lachlan, Murray, Weir. Only selected rivers are labeled at this scale; a missing label does not mean that a river is absent.
Greens show lower elevations; tan and brown show higher land, with pale tones toward the highest terrain. Shadows emphasize the slopes. Vertical relief is exaggerated to make landforms easier to read, so the map is not a slope survey. Blue tones distinguish seas from land; the legend is a guide to land elevation, not a chart of water depth.
The relief uses Terrain Tiles, a composite of SRTM, GMTED2010 and ETOPO1 elevation data distributed through the AWS Open Data program. Boundaries, rivers, lakes and feature names come from Natural Earth. These are small-scale educational maps rather than navigation or engineering surveys.
Blank physical map
The blank version keeps the mapped features and removes the place labels. Download it for a geography worksheet or practice identifying the features.
Features and names
| Reference | Name or description |
|---|---|
| Named physical feature | Great Dividing Range |
| Named physical feature | Western Plateau |
| Named physical feature | Great Artesian Basin |
| Named physical feature | Nullabor Plain |
| Named physical feature | Great Sandy Desert |
| Named physical feature | Great Victoria Desert |
| Named physical feature | Murray–Darling basin |
| Named physical feature | Gibson Desert |
| Named physical feature | Kimberley Plateau |
| Named physical feature | Australian Alps |
| Named physical feature | Flinders Ranges |
| Named physical feature | Blue Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Gregory Range |
| Named physical feature | Selwyn Mountains |
| Named physical feature | MacDonnell Ranges |
| Named physical feature | Darling Range |
| Named physical feature | Hamersley Range |
| Named physical feature | Buckland Tableland |
| Named physical feature | Barkly Tableland |
| Named physical feature | Strzelecki Desert |
| Named physical feature | Simpson Desert |
| Named physical feature | Tanami Desert |
| Named physical feature | Darling Downs |
| Named physical feature | Uluru |
| Named physical feature | Bluff Knoll |
| Named physical feature | Mount Ossa |
Data sources and license
- Natural Earth (public-domain geography): Public domain.
- Terrain Tiles / Mapzen (SRTM, GMTED2010, ETOPO1): Open elevation data; source attribution retained.
Map design and rendered images: Atlas of Maps, CC BY 4.0. Source databases retain their own licenses; the map license does not replace them.
Also see the political map of Australia, with cities, internal divisions, a location map and printable outline maps.
Frequently asked questions
What does a physical map show?
A physical map shows landforms and water: mountains, plateaus, lowlands, rivers, lakes and seas. This map uses elevation colors and hill shading instead of coloring each country separately.
Can I download physical map of australia without labels?
Yes. The blank relief map retains the terrain, rivers and outlines but removes place names. Both versions are available as PNG and PDF; the PDF uses A4 paper and can be scaled to US Letter.
Use this map
You can download, print and share this map for free, in class, in school projects, in presentations and on websites, as long as you credit the source: Physical map of Australia · Atlas of Maps (atlasofmaps.com), license CC BY 4.0.