Largest suburbs in New South Wales

1. 1

   Blacktown, NSW

   Population 50,961 · Median income $1,774/wk · SEIFA 965

2. 2

   Port Macquarie, NSW

   Population 47,693 · Median income $1,282/wk · SEIFA 969

   Port Macquarie sits at the mouth of the Hastings River on the New South Wales Mid North Coast, about 390 kilometres north of Sydney. It lies within Birpai country, and the Birpai people are recognised as the traditional custodians, long knowing the place as Guruk. The explorer John Oxley named the harbour in 1818 after Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and from 1821 it served as a penal settlement for convicts who had reoffended. Today the town trades on its string of surf beaches, the convict-built St Thomas' Anglican Church of the 1820s, and a well-known koala hospital that nurses injured wildlife. The rainforest boardwalk at Sea Acres National Park brings the subtropical coast within easy reach.

3. 3

   Dubbo, NSW

   Population 43,516 · Median income $1,690/wk · SEIFA 966

   Dubbo is the largest city in the Orana region of central-western New South Wales, set on the Macquarie River about 390 kilometres north-west of Sydney. Evidence of Wiradjuri habitation in the area stretches back tens of thousands of years, and the name is thought to come from a Wiradjuri word, though its precise meaning is uncertain. European pastoralists arrived from the late 1820s; the village was gazetted in 1849, became a municipality in 1872 and was proclaimed a city in 1966. A major road and rail freight hub, Dubbo is best known for the open-range Taronga Western Plains Zoo and the heritage-listed Old Dubbo Gaol. Its economy spans agriculture, meat processing, health, retail and tourism for the surrounding region.

4. 4

   Orange, NSW

   Population 41,232 · Median income $1,641/wk · SEIFA 975

   Orange is a cool-climate city in the Central West of New South Wales, about 250 kilometres west of Sydney and sitting high on the inland tablelands at over 860 metres. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with the fruit: the surveyor Major Thomas Mitchell named it in 1846 after the Prince of Orange, whom he had served alongside in the Peninsular War. The district lies on Wiradjuri country, and an 1851 gold strike at nearby Ophir helped touch off the Australian gold rush. Today Orange is known for its cool-climate wineries, its apple and stone-fruit orchards and its produce, with Mount Canobolas rising to the south-west.

5. 5

   Castle Hill (NSW), NSW

   Population 40,874 · Median income $2,551/wk · SEIFA 1124

6. 6

   Auburn (NSW), NSW

   Population 39,333 · Median income $1,533/wk · SEIFA 908

   Auburn is a multicultural suburb of Western Sydney, about 16 kilometres west of the central business district, today part of Cumberland City Council. The Wangal clan are recognised among the original inhabitants of the district; the celebrated colonial-era figures Bennelong and his wife Barangaroo were both Wangal people. In February 1793 the surrounding area became one of the colony's first free-settler farming districts, granted to a small group that included Quaker families and known as Liberty Plains — a proud heritage still echoed in the local motto, 'Liberty, with steady zeal'. The township itself was surveyed in the late 1870s and named Auburn after Oliver Goldsmith's poem 'The Deserted Village', which opens 'Sweet Auburn! Loveliest village of the plain'. Successive waves of migration have since made Auburn one of Sydney's most diverse suburbs, home to the landmark Auburn Botanical Gardens and the Turkish-built Gallipoli Mosque.

7. 7

   Baulkham Hills, NSW

   Population 37,415 · Median income $2,474/wk · SEIFA 1111

   Baulkham Hills is a suburb in the Hills District of Greater Sydney, about 30 kilometres north-west of the central business district and largely inside The Hills Shire, which it once gave its name to and served as the seat of. The land was originally home to the Bidjigal people, understood to be a clan of the Darug, who are remembered today in the Bidjigal Reserve spreading across several neighbouring suburbs. One of the district's first European settlers, William Joyce, took up a grant here in the 1790s and built a farmhouse that still stands. The suburb's name came from Andrew McDougall, a settler who thought the area resembled Buckholm Hills near his home in the Scottish county of Roxburgh; it was officially recognised in 1802, and the post office followed in 1856. Long a farming district of orchards and smallholdings, Baulkham Hills was subdivided for housing through the 20th century and is now a busy residential centre served by the Sydney Metro Northwest line. Its Orange Blossom Festival, a nod to the area's citrus-growing past, is held each spring.

8. 8

   Bankstown, NSW

   Population 34,933 · Median income $1,331/wk · SEIFA 913

   Bankstown lies in south-western Sydney, about 19 kilometres from the city centre, and is the busy commercial heart of the City of Canterbury-Bankstown. Before European settlement the surrounding Cumberland Plain woodland was the Country of the Bediagal people, whose lands bordered those of the Dharawal and Darug. In 1795 Matthew Flinders and George Bass rowed up the Georges River and reported favourably on the land along its banks; Governor John Hunter soon established one of the colony's pioneer settlements there. He named it after Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist who had sailed to Australia with Captain James Cook in 1770. The early riverside settlement is partly preserved within Mirambeena Regional Park. From the 1940s Bankstown Airport and wartime aircraft manufacturing drove rapid industrial growth, and post-war migration made the suburb one of the most multicultural in the country. Paul Keating, Australia's twenty-fourth prime minister, grew up locally and is honoured by a park bearing his name.

9. 9

   Merrylands, NSW

   Population 32,472 · Median income $1,470/wk · SEIFA 933

   Merrylands is a suburb of Western Sydney, lying about twenty-five kilometres west of the central business district within the Cumberland City Council area. It takes its name from the former English home of Arthur Todd Holroyd, a nineteenth-century settler who acquired land here in 1855 and whose name also lives on in the neighbouring suburb of Holroyd. The commercial heart of Merrylands gathers around its railway station on Merrylands Road, where a cluster of art deco buildings from the 1930s and 1940s still stands, alongside the Stockland Merrylands shopping centre. Green space is generous: the Central Gardens nature reserve, entered from Merrylands Road, is home to kangaroos, emus and birdlife among its lake and waterfalls, while parks such as Merrylands Park and Granville Park offer sporting fields and a swim centre. The suburb has produced notable Australians including the track-and-field athlete Betty Cuthbert, who was born here, and the rapper Barkaa, who grew up locally.

10. 10

    Ryde, NSW

    Population 31,907 · Median income $2,024/wk · SEIFA 1085

    Ryde sits on the north bank of the Parramatta River, a long-established suburb in Sydney's north-west and the administrative heart of the City of Ryde. Long known to its Aboriginal inhabitants as Wallumatta, the district was opened to settlers as Eastern Farms in the early 1790s, soon picked up the curious name Kissing Point, and from the 1840s took the name Ryde — borrowed from the town of Ryde on England's Isle of Wight, reputedly by a settler who had come from there and kept a store. The area holds some of the colony's oldest fabric, including Addington, said to be among Australia's earliest surviving settler cottages, and the churchyard of St Anne's, where Maria Ann Smith — the 'Granny' Smith of apple fame — is buried. Its Top Ryde centre grew around one of the country's first shopping malls, and the local leisure centre hosted water polo at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

11. 11

    Hurstville, NSW

    Population 31,162 · Median income $1,804/wk · SEIFA 1012

    Hurstville sits in southern Sydney, about 16 kilometres south of the central business district, and serves as the administrative centre of the Georges River Council in the St George district. At the time of the First Fleet the country along the Georges River, from Botany Bay towards present-day Liverpool, was home to the Eora people; an early meeting at Lime Kiln Bay in January 1788 saw food and drink shared between the visitors and the local inhabitants. The name joins the old English 'hurst', meaning a wooded eminence, to 'ville' for a town. Crown grants in 1808 went to the brothers John and Robert Townson, and in 1812 the merchant Simeon Lord bought the holding and called it Lord's Forest; from 1850 Michael Gannon subdivided it into small farms known as Gannon's Forest. A local school took the name Hurstville in 1876, the railway station borrowed it when the line opened in 1884, and the municipality was incorporated in 1887 before being declared a city in 1988. Today Hurstville is one of Sydney's busiest multicultural centres, with a large Chinese community, the Westfield shopping complex and a reputation as a dining destination. Among those who grew up here were the three-time Formula One world champion Jack Brabham and the tennis great Ken Rosewall.

12. 12

    Liverpool, NSW

    Population 31,078 · Median income $1,303/wk · SEIFA 888

    Liverpool is a major centre in South Western Sydney, on the western bank of the Georges River about 31 km south-west of the city centre. Before British settlement the area was the Country of the Cabrogal clan of the Dharug nation, whose name is linked to the edible timber larvae once gathered across the district. Governor Lachlan Macquarie founded the town as an agricultural settlement on 7 November 1810, naming it after Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool, then Secretary of State for the Colonies. A post office — among the colony's first — opened in 1825, and Liverpool was one of six stations on New South Wales' earliest telegraph line. The retail heart runs along Macquarie Street beside the large Westfield Liverpool centre, while St Luke's Anglican Church, in the city centre, is the oldest surviving Anglican church in Australia. Today the council promotes its centre as a third Sydney CBD, anchored by the nearby Western Sydney Airport.

13. 13

    Maroubra, NSW

    Population 30,722 · Median income $2,141/wk · SEIFA 1090

    Maroubra is a beachside suburb in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, about 10 km south-east of the city centre and the largest suburb in the City of Randwick by both area and population. Its name is said to come from Moorooboora, a leader of the Murro-ore-dial clan of the Eora people, a word linked to the idea of a pathway. British settlement began in the 1860s, and over the following decades the area grew into the residential beach community it is today. Maroubra Beach is the heart of the suburb — a long surf beach that has produced generations of board-riders. It is also remembered for the Hereward, an iron sailing ship driven ashore in a gale in 1898, whose remains are still uncovered on the sand by big seas from time to time.

14. 14

    Parramatta, NSW

    Population 30,211 · Median income $2,092/wk · SEIFA 1065

    Parramatta lies about 24 km west of the Sydney CBD at the head of the navigable Parramatta River, and is widely described as Greater Sydney's 'second CBD'. The land is the country of the Burramattagal, a clan of the Dharug people, and the city's name comes from their word for the place — usually given as something close to 'the place where the eels lie down'. Founded by the colony in 1788, it is one of the oldest inland European settlements in Australia, and Old Government House in Parramatta Park is the country's oldest surviving public building. Today the city blends that history with high-rise offices, the busy Church Street dining strip and the new Western Sydney Stadium.

15. 15

    Epping (NSW), NSW

    Population 29,551 · Median income $2,243/wk · SEIFA 1117

    Epping is a suburb in Sydney's north-west, about 18 kilometres from the central business district, today wholly within the City of Parramatta. The Wallumettagal people lived in the country between the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers, and from 1792 Governor Arthur Phillip began granting land here in a district his maps labelled the Field of Mars, after the Roman god of war. When the railway arrived in 1886 its station first carried that name, then briefly Carlingford, before the suburb settled on Epping in 1899 — a name put forward by the landowner William Midson for a town near Epping Forest in Essex, where his father had been born. The old Field of Mars grants were broken into farms and orchards, and after the Second World War, as land in the green belt was released from 1948, Epping filled in as a leafy residential district well served by trains. The Seven Network ran its studios here until 2009, and a Sydney Metro station opened in 2019. Long valued for its schools and transport, Epping is now a busy, diverse centre with a large Chinese, Korean and Indian community around its station.

16. 16

    Randwick, NSW

    Population 28,943 · Median income $2,422/wk · SEIFA 1149

    Randwick is an established suburb in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, about six kilometres south-east of the city centre and the civic heart of the City of Randwick. It owes its name to the village of Randwick in Gloucestershire, England — the birthplace of Simeon Henry Pearce, who with his brother James drove the district's early development and served as mayor six times; the first stone house he built here in 1848 still stands. Proclaimed a municipality in 1859 and a city in 1990, Randwick keeps a rich stock of heritage buildings, and a good deal of its north-west corner is taken up by the famous Randwick Racecourse. Its main shopping runs along Belmore Road, while the art deco Ritz cinema anchors the lively dining precinct known as The Spot.

17. 17

    Mosman, NSW

    Population 28,329 · Median income $2,892/wk · SEIFA 1169

    Mosman is an affluent harbourside suburb on Sydney's Lower North Shore, about 8 km north-east of the city centre on a peninsula between Sydney Harbour and Middle Harbour. The area was originally home to the Borogegal people. Its name comes from Archibald Mosman, who with his twin brother George took up a land grant here in 1831 and ran a whaling station in the sheltered inlet now called Mosman Bay. Today the suburb is best known for Taronga Zoo, which has looked out over the harbour since 1916, and for swimming spots such as Balmoral Beach. Leafy streets and harbour views have long made it one of Sydney's most sought-after addresses.

18. 18

    Carlingford, NSW

    Population 28,044 · Median income $2,084/wk · SEIFA 1085

    Carlingford is a suburb of Sydney about 22 kilometres north-west of the central business district, in the City of Parramatta, sitting astride Pennant Hills Road where Northern and Western Sydney meet. The Wallumedegal people lived in the country between the Parramatta and Lane Cove Rivers, and their name is thought to come from wallumai, a word for the snapper, joined with matta, associated with a place or water. From 1804 the area lay within the Field of Mars Common, and through the 19th century it became orchard country, its hills planted with oranges, stone fruit, apples and pears. The name Carlingford was adopted in 1883 for the post office at Mobbs Hill; one account traces it to a worker who likened the hill to the town of Carlingford in County Louth, Ireland, another to Lord Carlingford, a British colonial under-secretary. The selective James Ruse Agricultural High School, opened in 1959, recalls the district's farming past, and a light-rail station reached the suburb in 2024.

19. 19

    Quakers Hill, NSW

    Population 27,893 · Median income $2,310/wk · SEIFA 1043

    Quakers Hill is a suburb of Greater Western Sydney, in the City of Blacktown, and is known locally simply as 'Quakers'. The name has older roots in Parramatta, where an early street was called Quaker's Row; tradition holds that residents linked to it moved west to the rise that took the name, which the government surveyor James Meehan recorded in 1806. The district stayed rural for decades — when the railway arrived in 1872 the station was first called Douglas' Siding, only becoming Quakers Hill in 1905 as a village grew around it. Early landmarks included the Empire Theatre, opened in 1925 as both a cinema and a dance hall serving the surrounding farms. From the 1960s Sydney's outward spread subdivided the old five-acre holdings for housing, and in 1994 the former naval training base HMAS Nirimba was redeveloped into the Nirimba Education Precinct, which today brings together TAFE, a university campus and schools. The suburb has produced footballers, musicians and journalists.

20. 20

    Coffs Harbour, NSW

    Population 27,089 · Median income $1,231/wk · SEIFA 922

    Coffs Harbour sits on the New South Wales mid-north coast, roughly 530 kilometres north of Sydney and 390 kilometres south of Brisbane, on the lands of the Gumbaynggirr people, the Traditional Custodians of this coast, who are said to have known the harbour as Gitten Mirreh, or 'big moon'. The town took its present name after the trader John Korff sheltered here from a storm in 1847; a surveyor later changed the spelling. Once a timber and banana centre, it is best known today for the Big Banana, opened in 1965, and for its beaches, its heritage timber jetty, and the protected waters of the Solitary Islands Marine Park, with Muttonbird Island a short walk from the marina.

21. 21

    Kellyville, NSW

    Population 27,011 · Median income $3,044/wk · SEIFA 1147

    Kellyville lies in Sydney's Hills District, about 36 kilometres north-west of the city centre in The Hills Shire. The land is the traditional country of the Bidjigal people, a clan of the Dharug. The suburb is believed to take its name from Hugh Kelly, an early publican whose Bird-In-Hand inn stood on Windsor Road, and the surrounding area was once nicknamed Irish Town for the Kelly clan who farmed there. After Kelly died in 1884, his holdings and neighbouring grants were subdivided into farmlets as the Kellyville Estate, fixing the present route of Windsor Road. Kellyville Public School dates to 1873 and the local post office opened in 1889. Semi-rural for much of the twentieth century, Kellyville became one of the fastest-growing parts of The Hills, and the Sydney Metro North West rail line reached the suburb in 2019.

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    Marrickville, NSW

    Population 26,570 · Median income $2,170/wk · SEIFA 1087

    Marrickville sits in Sydney's Inner West, about seven kilometres south-west of the city centre on the northern bank of the Cooks River, and is the largest suburb in the Inner West Council area. The land is part of the Cooks River basin, and a riverside path threads past wetland birdlife including spoonbills, pelicans and lorikeets. The area is the Country of the Cadigal people of the Eora Nation, who are recorded as having known it as Bulanaming. European timber-getting gave way to farming and, from 1855, to a village laid out across Thomas Chalder's Marrick Estate — the name is said to echo Chalder's home village of Marrick in England. Today Marrickville is known for its cultural diversity and its lively mix of housing, shops and light industry.

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    Greenacre, NSW

    Population 26,314 · Median income $1,449/wk · SEIFA 947

24. 24

    Campsie, NSW

    Population 26,132 · Median income $1,497/wk · SEIFA 954

25. 25

    Strathfield (NSW), NSW

    Population 25,915 · Median income $2,262/wk · SEIFA 1086

    Strathfield is a leafy suburb in Sydney's Inner West, about 14 km west of the city centre. The district was originally the Country of the Wangal clan. European land grants began in 1793 across an area known as Liberty Plains, and a grant made to James Wilshire in 1808 later formed the Redmire Estate — a name said to come either from Redmire in North Yorkshire or from the area's red clay soils. The railway arrived in 1855, and subdivision from 1867 created the village of Redmyre. A house called Stratfieldsaye, built by Walter Renny in 1868, eventually lent the suburb its present name, and Strathfield Council was proclaimed in 1885. After Federation the suburb drew business and political figures — prime ministers George Reid, Earle Page and Frank Forde all lived locally — and it remains known for grand Federation and Victorian houses, established private schools and a town centre so rich in Korean dining it is often called Little Korea.

Rankings are editorial, based on the public data shown on each suburb page. See our methodology.