This is the beginning of a collection of good places to look for data. If you’re looking for a specific dataset, try asking in the Teachers Using Data Science Facebook group, or email contact@adsei.org. There’s a good chance we can help you find it!
I’ve sorted them into rough categories. Many of the repositories contain data that spans categories, so don’t be afraid to rummage and see what treasures you can find!
Australian Government Data
State Repositories
State data portals often include data from government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA).
data.gov.au is a great place for Australian government data, and also contains information about NationalMap, which is a very useful tool for visualising geospatial data. You can do things like view a choropleth map (regions coloured by value) of average weekly earnings, according to the 2021 census, which is pretty cool.
data.vic.gov.au is the Victorian Government open data site, which has all kinds of government data, including train passenger counts, where you can do things like compare pre pandemic train usage with 2020, or 2023.
https://data.nsw.gov.au/ is the NSW open data site, similar to the Victorian government site. Everything from transport to bushifire impact on water quality.
https://data.wa.gov.au/ is the Western Australian open data site. Again a wide range of data, including geospatial datasets about native title applications.
https://data.sa.gov.au/ South Australian open data, including most popular baby names.
https://data.nt.gov.au/ Northern Territory.
https://www.thelist.tas.gov.au/app/content/data Tasmania
https://www.data.qld.gov.au Queensland
https://www.data.act.gov.au ACT
Government Agencies
For some really interesting Australian Education data, check out the ACARA website.
Australian voting data can be found at the AEC. It’s worth digging down past the statistics to the actual vote files, as those are really rich datasets where you can explore differences by electorate, polling booth, etc.
There is a tonne of fascinating downloadable data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology provides free downloads of weather observations from stations around the country, among other data (this is a direct link to the weather station data page, which can be rather difficult to find). Weather stations come and go over time, so check the dates covered by each download.
Victorian Crime Statistics Agency. Various different downloads, with a lot of interesting historical data.
Environmental/Ecological data
You can also download data from the USA EPA.
For Ocean Data, check out the Australian Ocean Data Network.
Mapped data from the Friends of the Earth, including pollution and koala data: https://australianmap.net/
The Atlas of Living Australia is a treasure trove of data about Australian fauna and flora, with citizen science data and scientific research results.
Assorted Data
GapMinder.org has some great ways of exploring data, plus downloads. I particularly love their bubble charts.
A live feed (with historical data as well) of telemetry from the International Space Station.
OurWorldInData.org has datasets on a huge range of issues, from Covid19 to Poverty, CO2 emissions, energy sources, and more. It graphs and explains the data, with an easy download button on every graph, so that you can play with the data yourself.
There are plenty more amazing data repositories out there. If you have a favourite that should be listed here, please email us!
If you’d like to support ADSEI’s efforts to get real data into the classroom, you can donate at givenow.com.au/adsei/
Want some help building data projects unique to your students? That’s our favourite thing to do! Email us at contact@adsei.org.