The 99 fastest-growing towns and cities in Australia

This survey of our biggest cities and towns finds there is a place to suit everyone – tradies, retirees, religious believers and the civic minded.

The seachange community of Airlie Beach-Cannonvale grew by 30 per cent in the decade to 2023. Picture: Supplied

This is the story of modern Australia, of where we live, where we’re gravitating to, and what these various aggregations and movements say about the priorities and the behaviours of the Australian people almost a quarter of the way into the 21st century.

The story starts with a perspective of Australian life that has never been provided previously. It is based on a list of population centres (cities and towns) ranked from highest to lowest for the 99 largest such centres in Australia.

On Tuesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its annual schedule of Significant Urban Areas, a ranking of the largest towns and cities in Australia. I have combined this with the more familiar concept of “greater metropolitan areas” to come up with a list of the 99 largest towns and cities and how their populations have changed over the past decade.

About 90 per cent of the Australian population lives in these 99 cities and towns. The balance lives in small communities of fewer than 10,000 residents, as well as on farmlands and across the remote interior of the continent.

Eighteen million Australians live in eight capital cities. Greater Sydney including the Central Coast has 5.450 million, up 693,132 over the past decade. Greater Melbourne has 5.207 million, up 837,078 over the same decade. The Sydney-Melbourne population gap at June 2023 was 243,351. Melbourne is closing that gap by 143,946 every 10 years. On current rates, the greater metropolitan area of Melbourne will overtake greater Sydney at some point in the late 2030s. (It could be earlier if Sydney continues to offer housing that is significantly less affordable than Melbourne.)

My list of the 99 largest cities and towns shows which Australian places are rising and falling over the decade since 2013. Take, for example, Geelong (2023 population 302,046) now the 11th largest city in Australia. In 2013, Geelong had 49,482 fewer residents than 10th-ranked Wollongong. That gap today has been reduced to 11,699. Geelong could replace Wollongong as the 10th largest city in Australia by 2030.

Geelong could replace Wollongong as the 10th largest city in Australia by 2030. Picture: Alan Barber

Of the 99 cities and towns included in the ranking, the fastest growing over the decade to June 2023 was the Victorian town (surely by now a city) of Warragul-Drouin, located just beyond the eastern edge of greater Melbourne.

The population of Warragul-Drouin increased by 41 per cent or 13,284 residents over 10 years to reach 45,597 at June 2023. It is now the 33rd largest town in Australia, up from 45th position a decade ago. Watch out Ballina (now ranked 32nd with a population of 47,188 and growing more slowly), and also watch out Gladstone, Port Macquarie and Mildura, now respectively ranked the 31st, 30th and 29th largest cities in Australia.

On the other hand, perhaps the mayor and the CEO of Warragul-Drouin (Shire of Baw Baw) should make a fact-finding trip to Wagga Wagga or Hervey Bay to see what kind of services might be expected in a town with a population base of 58,000-61,000, which is where Warragul-Drouin could be headed by 2033.

Indeed, Warragul-Drouin is one of a number of Tradie Towns that have emerged on the edges of our capital cities. According to the 2021 Census, there were 129 tradies (technicians and trades workers) per 1000 workers in the Australian workforce. In Warragul-Drouin, now the fastest growing town (of 10,000 or more residents) in Australia, this ratio was 158 per 1000, or 22 per cent above the national average.

The reason tradies gravitate to Warragul-Drouin seems straightforward enough. This cohort gravitate to treechange communities just beyond the edge of the metropolitan area and then commute back into the city, not to the CBD but rather to house-construction workplaces located in the outermost suburbs. (I reckon the Ford Ranger dealership in Warragul-Drouin must be going gangbusters.)

But it’s not just Warragul-Drouin; other towns are also emerging with similar tradie-attracting attributes including Cooranbong-Morisset (2023 population 29,421) north of Sydney where the tradie-to-total-workforce ratio reached 169 per 1000 at the 2021 ­Census, or 31 per cent above the national average.

And so it is that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the population of Cooranbong-Morisset jumped 27 per cent over the decade to June 2023.

Tradie towns located closest to the gravitational orbit of capital cities (that is, within regular commuting distance) are inevitably swept up by, and are absorbed by, the ever expanding definition of our greater metropolitan areas. This is what has happened to classic tradie towns like Yanchep, Bacchus Marsh and Gisborne which are now included within the populations of greater Perth and greater Melbourne.

In the grand sweep of towns that litter the Australian continent, the fastest growing in percentage terms over the decade to 2023 have undisputably been tradie towns, but there have also been seachange communities like Airlie Beach-Cannonvale (up 30 per cent), Sunshine Coast (up 28 per cent), Busselton (up 27 per cent), Gold Coast and Yeppoon (both up 22 per cent), and urban overspill communities like Geelong (up 28 per cent) and Ballarat (up 21 per cent). Towns that have fewer residents today than in 2013 include Mt Isa (down 13 per cent), Kalgoorlie-Boulder (down 7 per cent), Broken Hill (down 6 per cent), Lithgow (down 5 per cent), Lismore (down 4 per cent), and a few others.

A common theme in these communities is the collapse of the resources boom (2008-12) which resulted in workers gradually leaving town after 2013. I also think there’s an element of the allure of a seachange lifestyle that has siphoned jobs and workers from the inland administrative centre of Lismore to coastal communities such as Ballina, Byron Bay and Tweed Heads in the Northern Rivers region of NSW.

The ranking of the 25 largest cities and towns in Australia has not changed over the decade to 2023. The Coffs Harbour of today with 75,838 residents is still the 25th largest city in Australia as it was in 2013 when it accommodated just 67,926 residents.

And then there’s the argument that a list of 99 cities and towns is messy; why not make it 100? The ABS list of Significant Urban Areas stops at around the 10,000-population mark which is why No. 99 is Kingaroy. Making this list, I think, gives a community greater visibility to the investment and development community because population levels are monitored every year. Plus, rising in the rankings suggests to investors that this is a place to consider.

By referring to the Urban Centres & Localities dataset from the 2021 Census it is evident that the options to round-out my list of 99 cities and towns to 100 might eventually include the likes of Yarrabilba near Logan in southeast Queensland (2021 population 10,240) and Casino in Northern Rivers, NSW (9968). I also like Sandstone Point-Ningi , Bribie Island (9929), which will surely get a baby boomer retirement boost in the coming years. Maybe the ABS will consider these contenders for admission to the SUA club later in the 2020s?

What I like most about this ranking of the largest 99 cities and towns in Australia is that they each have unique attributes. There might be a truckload of tradies resident in Warragul-Drouin and in Cooranbong-Morisset but these aggregations pale in comparison with Australia’s tradie heartland.

In Port Hedland, there are 251 tradies per 1000 residents. That’s a quarter of the workforce with technical can-do skills. If you need to poach a tradie, Port Hedland is the place to be. And Karratha isn’t too far behind with 249 tradies per 1000 workers.

Interestingly, a new question posed at the 2021 Census asked residents about long-term mental health conditions, specifically anxiety and depression. Of the 99 towns considered, mental health concerns were lowest in Port Hedland, Karratha, Mt Isa and Broome, all with just 6 per cent of the population reporting anxiety concerns as compared with an Australian average of 10 per cent.

Home ownership levels are highest in places like Gisborne (officially part of greater Melbourne) where 84 per cent of dwellings are owned. Lowest home ownership rates (19 per cent) apply in Port Hedland largely due, I suspect, to the presence of a highly transient population.

Of the towns considered, the place where most residents report some kind of religious affiliation is Griffith in the Riverina region of NSW, where this proportion reaches 80 per cent of the population as compared with a national average of 58 per cent. Surely religious ministers would be angling to get the Griffith gig; it’s an easier market than, say, Castlemaine where just 32 per cent of ­locals say they are believers.

The town with the highest ­median weekly income at the time of the last Census was Karratha at $3194, which compares with a greater Sydney median weekly income of $2119. Technically, and by this measure, Karratha is a richer city than Sydney. Perhaps the people of Point Piper might like to consider moving west?

The lowest median household weekly income applies to the retirement community of Foster-Tuncurry, with $960 in 2021 – which is barely one-third the income reported in Karratha.

About 15 per cent of the adult community reported via the Census that they volunteer, but in civic-minded Castlemaine this proportion is 27 per cent. In Esperance on the south coast of WA, some 26 per cent of adults volunteer. Volunteering reflects, I think, a strong and civic-minded community. Generally, volunteering rates are higher in the regions than in capital cities which are dominated by families with two parents working.

About 13 per cent of adults say via the Census that they provide unpaid care to someone. This proportion is lowest in Port Hedland at 7 per cent, perhaps because few have elderly relatives living locally. But in Castlemaine, this proportion peaks (among the towns considered) at 17 per cent. Castlemaine may have a low level of religious affiliation but this town has a strong commitment to community through unpaid care and volunteering.

Medowie, north of Newcastle, has the highest proportion (40 per cent) of households with three or more cars.

Interestingly, both greater Sydney and greater Melbourne score highly in the proportion of the population living in a family household with children – that is, mum, dad and the kids.

About 13 per cent of the population in Foster-Tuncurry and also in Castlemaine say they are divorced. The Australian average is 9 per cent. And Castlemaine also tops my list of 99 towns in commitment to domestic housework: 64 per cent say they do five hours-plus per week. In Griffith, this number is 43 per cent.

The picture that emerges is a nation in which every town has a place and a purpose. Big cities attract and hold young families. Retirees and lifestylers move from the capital cities to the regions. Some city-shifters spill over to nearby provincial cities. The outer suburbs are being built by tradies who live even further out beyond the city’s edges.

Australia’s resources towns shed labour and population a decade ago, and many have yet to ­recover to the same population level. Places like Port Hedland and Karratha and others are unusually specific in the skills base they attract: young, skilled tradies earning high income levels in a community that is work-focused, that is remarkably relaxed (by the measure of mental health concerns) and that doesn’t have the local support of an older grandparent generation.

Seachange towns remain as popular as ever to the extent that I suspect many are siphoning skills and labour from traditional inland centres. These communities – including the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, the Airlie Beach-Cannonvale rocket (up a third in a decade), Forster-Tuncurry, Victor Harbor-Goolwa plus Sandstone Point-Ningi (on the rise) – is where Middle Australia sees themselves in the years to come.

Most Australians may live in the vast suburbs of a capital city but this exploration of the 99 largest cities in Australia shows that across the life cycle there is movement between cities and towns – and that among the smaller ­cities and towns of Australia there’s a place and a community that will suit everyone, eventually.

Bernard Salt is founder and executive director of The Demographics Group; data by data scientist Hari Hara Priya Kannan.