Planning data
Bushfire-prone land, and why a category number does not travel
Every state maps bushfire-prone land and every state names its classes differently. A "Category 2" in one state is not a "Category 2" in another, and neither is a severity score.
788 of the 958 Australian suburbs published on this site have bushfire-prone land mapped over part of them. That is a count of our own published pages, not of every suburb in the country — the corpus grows, and this page is rebuilt with it. A further 162 returned nothing from a layer that was read, which is a finding rather than a gap: certifying bushfire-prone land is a duty of the mapping authority in every state in this dataset, so a blank means checked-and-clear.
What the mapping does is trigger an assessment. A block inside it needs a bushfire attack level assessed for the particular site, and that level — driven by slope, by the class and extent of nearby vegetation, and above all by separation from it — sets construction requirements: glazing, external cladding, decking, subfloor enclosure, screening to vents and weepholes, ember protection at the roof. Moving up a level is a material cost, which is why siting is a cost decision and only available before a design is fixed.
Three other requirements travel with it and are easy to miss on a larger holding, because in town the street and the water main solve them: an asset protection zone of low-fuel land that has to be achievable and maintainable inside the property, access a fire appliance can use and turn in, and a water supply for firefighting where there is no mains hydrant. On a town block the construction standard usually dominates. On a holding, access and water are what reshape a site plan.
193 of these suburbs carry four or more distinct classes at once, which means the mapping varies across the suburb and the class at a particular address cannot be inferred from the suburb.
How much is mapped, state by state
| State | Published suburbs | Bushfire mapped | Read and clear | Classes this state uses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | 315 | 285 | 30 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Victoria | 150 | 111 | 39 | — |
| Queensland | 135 | 111 | 18 | — |
| Western Australia | 123 | 108 | 15 | — |
| South Australia | 116 | 69 | 47 | General Risk, High Risk, Medium Risk, Urban Interface |
| Tasmania | 87 | 77 | 8 | — |
| the ACT | 32 | 27 | 5 | 1, 2, 3, Buffer |
That last column is the point of this page. The classes are the state's own vocabulary, not a national scale, so the words cannot be compared across a border — and a builder quoting experience with a class in one state is describing a different instrument from the one that will apply in another.
The 50 suburbs with the most mapped features
Feature counts are how many mapped bushfire polygons intersect the suburb. A high count means the mapping is extensive across that suburb; it is not a severity rating and says nothing about one parcel.
| Suburb | State | Mapped features | Classes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Darlington Point | NSW | 941 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Pokolbin | NSW | 348 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Dubbo | NSW | 336 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Bingara | NSW | 329 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Glen Innes | NSW | 324 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Bangalow | NSW | 308 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Cooranbong | NSW | 280 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Byron Bay | NSW | 208 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Tenterfield | NSW | 199 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Wyee | NSW | 199 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Coffs Harbour | NSW | 156 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Manilla | NSW | 150 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Bringelly | NSW | 147 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Leeton | NSW | 146 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Orange | NSW | 146 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Holbrook | NSW | 145 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Woolgoolga | NSW | 144 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Kemps Creek | NSW | 136 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Lochinvar | NSW | 136 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Narromine | NSW | 132 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Bodalla | NSW | 126 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Lovedale | NSW | 126 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Ocean Shores | NSW | 121 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Morisset | NSW | 113 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Muswellbrook | NSW | 113 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Crookwell | NSW | 108 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Ourimbah | NSW | 107 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Austral | NSW | 106 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Corowa | NSW | 106 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1 |
| Armidale | NSW | 103 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Narooma | NSW | 101 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Branxton | NSW | 97 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Moruya | NSW | 97 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Leppington | NSW | 95 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Kincumber | NSW | 93 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Merriwa | NSW | 93 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Greta | NSW | 84 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Appin | NSW | 81 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Rylstone | NSW | 81 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| North Rothbury | NSW | 80 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Cessnock | NSW | 77 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Charlestown | NSW | 77 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Arcadia | NSW | 76 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Jindera | NSW | 76 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Lisarow | NSW | 74 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2 |
| Seaham | NSW | 73 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Yanco | NSW | 72 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 2 |
| Marulan | NSW | 71 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Thornton | NSW | 68 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
| Clarence Town | NSW | 67 | Vegetation Buffer, Vegetation Category 1, Vegetation Category 2, Vegetation Category 3 |
Computed from this site's published suburb records when the page was built, as at 2 October 2026. Source: the ACT — ACTmapi (ACT Government) (CC BY 4.0); New South Wales — NSW ePlanning Spatial Viewer (CC BY 4.0); Queensland — Queensland Government open spatial data + individual councils (CC BY 4.0); South Australia — Planning and Design Code via SAPPA (PlanSA) (CC BY 4.0); Tasmania — theLIST (Land Information System Tasmania) (CC BY 3.0 AU); Victoria — Vicmap Planning (DTP Victoria) (CC BY 4.0); Western Australia — Landgate SLIP (CC BY 4.0). Only the highest counts are listed here; every published suburb reports its own bushfire mapping on its own page. Facts are suburb-level: they describe what is mapped in a suburb, not what applies to an individual property.