74 articles
Gulgong
Gulgong, NSW: historic gold rush town in the Central Tablelands, 20 km north of Mudgee. Known as the Ten Dollar Town, childhood home of Henry Lawson, with 130 National Trust buildings and the 1871 Prince of Wales Opera House.
Gunnedah
Gunnedah, NSW: a Namoi River town and shire centre on the Liverpool Plains, 80 km west of Tamworth, known for grains, cotton, coal, AgQuip, and Kamilaroi heritage.
Hobart
Hobart, capital of Tasmania, Australia, founded 1804 on the Derwent River at Sullivan's Cove; Australia's second oldest city. Known for colonial heritage, Antarctic gateway role, and acute housing affordability stress.
Innisfail, Queensland
Innisfail, Queensland: Cassowary Coast town in far north Australia, known for Art Deco architecture; 2021 census population 7,173 (urban centre); hit by Cyclone Larry in 2006.
Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie, Western Australian gold mining city 595 km east of Perth, founded after the June 1893 Hannan's Find gold discovery; with Boulder forms Kalgoorlie-Boulder, home of the Super Pit on the Golden Mile.
Launceston, Tasmania
Launceston, Tasmania: Australia's third-oldest city, at the North Esk–South Esk confluence forming the Kanamaluka/Tamar Estuary; over 71,000 residents, founded 1804 by William Paterson, a UNESCO City of Gastronomy.
Lightning Ridge, New South Wales
Lightning Ridge is a small opal-mining town in outback northern New South Wales, Australia, 72 km north of Walgett and the principal world source of fine black opal.
Lithgow, New South Wales
Lithgow, New South Wales: Central West NSW town west of the Blue Mountains, named 1827 for William Lithgow. Coal and railway town from 1869; first Australian steel by 1900; LGA population 20,740.
Mackay, Queensland
Mackay, Queensland: regional city on the Pioneer River, central Queensland coast, also called Australia's sugar capital. Founded 1862, named for John Mackay; tropical climate, major floods, sugar and coal-driven economy.
Maitland, New South Wales
Maitland, New South Wales: a Lower Hunter Valley city on the Hunter River, settled from about 1818 as Wallis Plains, formerly the Hunter's chief town, now one of NSW's fastest-growing regional cities with over 200 recorded floods since European settlement.
Mallacoota
Mallacoota is a small holiday and fishing town at the mouth of Mallacoota Inlet in far East Gippsland, Victoria, near the NSW border, known for abalone, bream fishing, Croajingolong National Park, and the 2019-20 bushfire naval evacuation.
Mandurah
Mandurah (Mandjoogoordap, 'meeting place of the heart') is a coastal city in Western Australia's Peel region, 74 km south of Perth, founded by Thomas Peel in 1830, population 107,641 (2021), centred on the Peel-Harvey Estuary.
Marble Bar, Western Australia
Marble Bar, Western Australia: Pilbara gold-rush town gazetted 13 July 1893, named for a jasper bar on the Coongan River, and famed as Australia's hottest town with summer temperatures above 40 degrees.
Margaret River, Western Australia
Margaret River, Western Australia: a river and town 267 km south of Perth, named in 1831 by John Bussell for Margaret Whicher, shaped by Group Settlement dairy farming, timber milling, surfing and a premium wine region begun in 1967.
Melbourne
Melbourne, capital of Victoria, Australia, founded 1835, population 5,435,590 (June 2025). Grew rich in the 1850s gold rush; now a leading education, liveability and events city projected to reach 9.1 million by 2065–66.
Mount Barker, South Australia
Mount Barker is a fast-growing Adelaide Hills town and local government centre in South Australia, 30 minutes from Adelaide, seat of the Mount Barker District Council (595 km2, about 39,200 people), rezoned in 2010 for major residential growth.
Mount Gambier
Mount Gambier is South Australia's largest regional city, built on a volcanic complex active about 4,000 years ago whose Blue Lake supplies the city's water and anchors a $215 million visitor economy.
Mount Isa
Mount Isa: outback mining city in north-west Queensland on the Leichhardt River, on Kalkadoon land, founded after John Campbell Miles' 1923 silver-lead discovery; Mount Isa Mines, copper closure in 2025, rodeo, population about 19,000.
Murwillumbah
Murwillumbah is a Northern Rivers town on the Tweed River, NSW, about 30 km from the Queensland border; Tweed Shire's administrative and commercial centre, population 9,812 (2021), hit by the record 2022 flood.
Nambour
Nambour is a hinterland town on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, Australia, formerly called Petrie's Creek and renamed in 1891. Known for its sugar-mill heritage, rail line, Nambour General Hospital, and 2021 census population of 20,918.
New Norcia, Western Australia
New Norcia is Australia's only monastic town, a Spanish Benedictine settlement 132 km north of Perth on the Moore River, founded in 1846 by Rosendo Salvado as an Aboriginal mission, later an educational centre and now a heritage and retreat destination.
Newcastle, New South Wales
Newcastle, also known as Newcastle, NSW, is a coastal city in New South Wales, Australia, about 160 km north of Sydney at the mouth of the Hunter River.
Nimbin, New South Wales
Nimbin, New South Wales: a Northern Rivers village about 30 km north of Lismore, transformed by the 1973 Aquarius Festival into Australia's counterculture center, known for murals, MardiGrass, and communes.
Norseman, Western Australia
Norseman is a goldmining town in Western Australia's eastern goldfields, about 724 km east of Perth, named after a horse that uncovered a gold nugget in 1894.
Orange, New South Wales
Orange, NSW: regional city in the Central Tablelands, 254 km west of Sydney, on Wiradjuri land below Gaanha-bula (Mount Canobolas). Proclaimed a village in 1846; the 1851 Ophir gold discovery nearby began the Australian gold rush; population about 44,000.
Perth
Perth (Boorloo), capital of Western Australia, founded 1829 by Captain James Stirling as capital of the free-settler Swan River Colony on Whadjuk Noongar country; 2.1 million people, Swan River location, planned growth to 3.5 million by 2050.
Port Macquarie
Port Macquarie is a coastal city on the Hastings River, mid-north coast NSW, founded in 1821 as a secondary penal settlement under Captain Francis Allman; now a regional centre of about 48,000 people.
Renmark, South Australia
Renmark, South Australia: Riverland town founded 14 February 1887 by the Chaffey brothers as Australia's oldest irrigation settlement; home of the Renmark Irrigation Trust (1893) and the community-owned Renmark Hotel.
Rockhampton
Rockhampton, Queensland city on the Fitzroy River, Australia's beef capital, proclaimed 1858 after the Canoona gold rush; Darumbal country, flood-prone, 2032 Olympic rowing venue.
Seymour, Victoria
Seymour, Victoria: rural town in Mitchell Shire, about 100 km north of Melbourne on the Goulburn River; railway town since 1872, military training centre, 2021 population 6,569, flood-prone, Inland Rail site.