Accessing "GIS (ESRI shape file)" files from Python ?

[Richard Shea]

Hi - As usual having Python is making me consider doing things I
wouldn't normally !

I've come across some files described as "GIS version (ESRI shape
file)" which consitute an electronic map of the Wellington, New
Zealand. There are six files in the package :

suburbs.shx
suburbs.prj
suburbs.sbn
suburbs.sbx
suburbs.shp
suburbs.shp.xml
suburbs.dbf

Can anyone tell me - is there, freely available, existing software
accessible from Python which would allow me to read these files ? One
thing I'm particularly interested to discover is if they contain
contour (altitude) information so ideally that's that the sort of
thing I would extract - but I'm just generally curious and wanting to
educate myself a little in this area.

In case it needs saying my knowledge of GIS is ... light ;-) but I'm
interested to discover a little more.


thanks

richard shea.