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Australia

7 city guides · Oceania

Cities in Australia (7)

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🇦🇺 Australia

Adelaide

Adelaide (population 1.4 million — the capital of South Australia, founded 1836 as a planned city by the colonial surveyor Colonel William Light who designed the distinctive grid of streets surrounded by a ring of parklands (the Adelaide Park Lands — the 770-hectare green belt that completely encircles the central city (the most significant example of planned parkland surrounding an urban grid in Australian history)) is the most underrated city in Australia: overshadowed by Sydney and Melbourne in the popular imagination, Adelaide has quietly developed an identity built on exceptional food and wine (the Adelaide Central Market — the largest fresh produce market in the Southern Hemisphere, operating since 1869), world-class arts (the Adelaide Festival and the Adelaide Fringe — the second-largest arts festival in the world after Edinburgh), cycling culture (one of the most cycling-friendly cities in the Southern Hemisphere) and access to the most important wine regions in Australia (the Barossa Valley (the most important wine region in Australia — the home of Penfolds Grange, the most expensive and celebrated Australian wine), the Clare Valley (the finest Riesling outside Germany and Alsace), the McLaren Vale (the most complex Mediterranean-climate wine region in Australia) and the Adelaide Hills (the cool-climate sauvignon blanc and chardonnay region) are all within 1 hour of the city center). The 2.5km Rundle Mall pedestrian zone (the main shopping street since 1976 — the first pedestrian shopping street in Australia) and the Rundle Street café strip (the most important café culture street in Adelaide) connect the East End (the university, gallery and museum precinct) to the Central Market and Chinatown (the second-oldest Chinatown in Australia). Adelaide was repeatedly named the world's most liveable city in the 1990s–2000s by the Economist Intelligence Unit, and consistently ranks in the top 10 globally.

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Canberra

Canberra (population 470,000) is Australia's capital city — a purpose-built federal capital created from scratch in 1908 after the long rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne over which city should be the nation's capital resulted in a constitutional compromise requiring an entirely new capital to be built in the Australian Capital Territory between the two rival cities. Designed by the American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin (who won the international design competition in 1913), Canberra is the largest inland city in Australia and one of the few national capitals in the world to have been conceived and built from the ground up in the 20th century. The city is defined by its extraordinary concentration of national institutions — the Australian War Memorial (the most visited cultural attraction in Australia), Parliament House (1988, the new parliament building with its distinctive grass-covered roof), the National Gallery of Australia, the National Museum of Australia and the National Library — all arrayed around the artificial Lake Burley Griffin at the heart of the planned city.

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Gold Coast

Gold Coast (population 750,000 — "Yugambeh Country" — the most precisely Yugambeh-Aboriginal-people single traditional custodians of the Gold Coast) is the most precisely surf-beach-and-theme-park single most internationally famous Australian coastal city. The Surfers Paradise Beach (the most precisely most-famous-single-Australian-surf-beach and the most precisely 2km-beach-with-high-rise-skyline single Gold Coast beachfront: the most comprehensively Gold-Coast-skyline-reflected-surf-beach single most photographically distinctive Australian coastal urban scene), the Hinterland (the most precisely Lamington-National-Park single ancient-subtropical-rainforest-UNESCO-World-Heritage-listed single Gold Coast escape: the most precisely O'Reilly's-Rainforest-Retreat single most famous Gold Coast hinterland destination), Warner Bros. Movie World (the most precisely largest-movie-theme-park single Australian theme park), Wet'n'Wild (the most precisely largest-water-park single Queensland coastal water park), and Burleigh Heads (the most precisely most-respected-single-surf-break in the most precisely Burleigh-Head-National-Park single Gold Coast headland). Gold Coast hosted the 2018 Commonwealth Games — the most precisely GC2018 single largest-event-in-Australian-history single multi-sport event hosted on the Gold Coast.

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Melbourne

Melbourne is consistently rated the world's most liveable city (EIU Global Liveability Index, 7 years as #1) — a claim that visitors quickly understand after spending time in the city's extraordinary coffee culture (Melbourne invented the flat white and the third-wave café concept), its labyrinthine laneway street art scene (Hosier Lane is the most photographed laneway in the world), its world-class gallery (the NGV is the most visited art museum in Australia), and the most diverse food scene in the southern hemisphere. Australia's second city (population 5.2 million, predicted to overtake Sydney by 2030) is the sporting capital of Australia (home of the Australian Open, the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix, the Melbourne Cup and the AFL Grand Final), the cultural capital (the State Library, Melbourne Museum, Arts Centre and the Sidney Myer Music Bowl all within walking distance) and the city with the most cafés per capita of any city on earth — a statistic Melburnians cite with genuine pride.

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Newcastle

Newcastle upon Tyne is the capital of England's northeast, a city that combined Roman frontier history (Hadrian's Wall begins here), Industrial Revolution coal and shipbuilding heritage and a fierce working-class cultural identity into one of the most distinctive cities in Britain. The city grew rich on coal exports — the expression "carrying coals to Newcastle" dates from the 16th century and refers to an act of supreme pointlessness because Newcastle already had more coal than it could use. The Tyne bridges (seven bridges within a 3 km stretch, including the iconic Tyne Bridge of 1928 and the tilting Millennium Bridge of 2001) define the city's silhouette as the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Sage Gateshead concert hall (Norman Foster, 2004) have transformed the Gateshead Quayside into one of England's most dynamic cultural districts. Newcastle's food scene produces the Greggs sausage roll (the chain was founded here in 1951), Craster kippers from the coast 30 miles north and an Indian restaurant culture so embedded that Curry Mile is a civic institution. The Geordies (Newcastle's people, named after King George II and his coal miners) are considered the friendliest in England, with an accent so strong it was famously classified as a foreign language by some European researchers, and a city pride that expresses itself through Newcastle United FC and an extraordinary nightlife centred on the Bigg Market.

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Perth

Perth is the world's most isolated major city — the nearest city with a comparable population (Adelaide) is 2,700 km to the east, making Perth geographically closer to Singapore than to Sydney; the city's population of 2.2 million live in a metropolitan area that stretches 150 km along the Indian Ocean coast of Western Australia, bounded by the Darling Escarpment (the Darling Range, 300 m, 30 km east) and the Indian Ocean to the west. The isolation is arguably Perth's greatest quality: the city has 3,000+ hours of sunshine per year (more than any other Australian capital), 19 beaches within 30 km of the city centre (including the world-famous Cottesloe and Scarborough), a wine region (Swan Valley) 20 minutes from the CBD, and the Pinnacles Desert (strange limestone formations in Nambung National Park) 250 km north. Kings Park (400 ha overlooking the city and the Swan River from a 60 m escarpment, containing 320 ha of native Western Australian bushland within 3 km of the CBD) is one of the world's great urban parks — the spring wildflower season (August–September) when Western Australian wildflowers bloom (WA has 12,000 wildflower species, 60% of them found nowhere else on earth) is internationally renowned. Rottnest Island (19 km offshore, the most-visited destination in Western Australia) is home to the quokka, the small wallaby-like marsupial famous for its perpetual grin that has made it the world's most 'selfied' animal. Perth's food and wine scene has matured significantly in the 2010s — the Margaret River wine region (300 km south) produces Australia's finest Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay; the CBD's Northbridge district has the densest restaurant and bar concentration in Australia outside Sydney and Melbourne.

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Sydney

Sydney is one of the most naturally beautiful cities in the world — the harbour, the Heads, the beaches and the Blue Mountains form a setting that would make any city feel extraordinary. But Sydney has made the most of it: the Opera House is one of the great works of 20th-century architecture; the markets, wine bars and restaurants of Surry Hills and Newtown are genuinely excellent; and the surfing at Manly and Bondi beaches is world-class. Three days here is a complete experience.

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