Area-preserving flows on compact surfaces are one of the classic examples of dynamical systems, also known as multi-valued Hamiltonian flows. Though Hamiltonian, area-preserving, and non-wandering properties for flows are distinct, there are some equivalence relations among them in the low-dimensional cases. In this paper, we describe equivalence and difference for continuous flows among Hamiltonian, divergence-free, and non-wandering properties topologically. More precisely, let v be a continuous flow with finitely many singular points on a compact surface. We show that v is Hamiltonian if and only if v is a non-wandering flow without locally dense orbits whose extended orbit space is a directed graph without directed cycles. Moreover, non-wandering, area-preserving, and divergence-free properties for v are equivalent to each other.