Largest suburbs in Victoria

1. 1

   Point Cook, VIC

   Population 66,781 · Median income $2,392/wk · SEIFA 1066

   Point Cook lies about 22 kilometres south-west of central Melbourne, on the shore of Port Phillip Bay in the City of Wyndham, and is today the most populated suburb in Australia. It was named in 1836 after John M. Cooke, a mate aboard the survey vessel Rattlesnake, which charted part of the bay that year. The pastoralist Thomas Chirnside took up the land in 1853 and built a substantial homestead, running it for hunting and horse breeding as part of a sprawling Western District estate. In 1912 the Federal Government bought a large parcel here to establish the Australian Flying Corps; its success in the First World War led to the founding of the Royal Australian Air Force, and Point Cook is remembered as the air force's birthplace and the home of the RAAF Museum. Long a quiet rural and military district, the suburb began its rapid transformation into a major residential growth area only in the late 1990s, and its bayside wetlands remain an important habitat for migratory birds.

2. 2

   Craigieburn, VIC

   Population 65,178 · Median income $1,798/wk · SEIFA 956

   Craigieburn sits about 25 kilometres north of central Melbourne, a satellite suburb on the city's northern urban-rural fringe in the City of Hume, rising towards Mount Ridley at its edge. The Wurundjeri people are the first people of the area. The suburb takes its name from an old bluestone inn that once served travellers along the Old Sydney Road; the name joins the Gaelic craigie, meaning craggy, with the Scots word burn, a stream. Craigieburn was a small farming hamlet by the 1860s, gained a railway station on the line to Seymour in 1872, and stayed quiet until 1972, when the first big residential subdivision began its transformation into one of Melbourne's major growth suburbs. The Hume Highway, which long ran through the centre, was diverted around the town by the Craigieburn Bypass in 2005, and the railway line was electrified through to Craigieburn in 2007. Today it is a large, fast-growing and notably multicultural suburb with extensive new estates, shopping centres and sporting facilities.

3. 3

   Tarneit, VIC

   Population 56,370 · Median income $2,103/wk · SEIFA 1010

   Tarneit is a rapidly growing outer suburb of Melbourne, about 25 km west of the city centre in the City of Wyndham. The Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nation were the first inhabitants of the area. European settlers used the land for grazing from the 1830s, and the name — recorded when the district was surveyed in 1839–1840 — is said to come from a Wathaurong word for the colour white. Tarneit stayed rural and sparsely settled until large-scale residential subdivision began in the early 2000s, with much of today's arterial road network still following an early square-mile grid. One of the few colonial-era landmarks is Doherty's House, a bluestone homestead built in the 1870s, whose walls and chimney survive a later fire. The suburb's growth was transformed by the Regional Rail Link, which opened in 2015 with a new Tarneit station offering a faster route into the city than the older Werribee line.

4. 4

   Melbourne, VIC

   Population 54,941 · Median income $1,448/wk · SEIFA 1076

5. 5

   Pakenham, VIC

   Population 54,118 · Median income $1,664/wk · SEIFA 958

   Pakenham is a suburb on the south-eastern edge of Melbourne, about 53 km from the central business district and the most populous town in the Shire of Cardinia. It lies in the traditional Country of the Kulin nation, with the Boon Wurrung people recognised as local custodians. The town was named after Sir Edward Pakenham, a British major general who served in the Peninsular War and was killed at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. European families took up large land selections in the district from the late 1830s, and a railway station opened in 1877 on the line linking Melbourne to Gippsland. Over recent decades Pakenham has become one of the city's major growth areas, its population and infrastructure expanding rapidly through estates such as Lakeside, Heritage Springs and Cardinia Lakes. The suburb sits on the Princes Highway, with a bypass carrying through-traffic around the centre, and is served by several railway stations marking the end of Melbourne's electrified suburban network.

6. 6

   Reservoir (Vic.), VIC

   Population 51,096 · Median income $1,541/wk · SEIFA 988

   Reservoir sits about twelve kilometres north of central Melbourne, within the City of Darebin. The land was first surveyed by Robert Hoddle in 1837 and drew its boundaries from the earlier Jika Jika and Keelbundoora parishes. The Rose Shamrock Hotel opened on Plenty Road in 1854, and a post office followed around 1921, by which time Reservoir had taken shape as a suburb. Its name comes from a trio of water reservoirs first built in 1863 and known collectively as the Preston Reservoir, which still helps supply Melbourne's inner and western suburbs; the Maroondah Aqueduct was added between 1886 and 1891 to feed them. In 1914 Thomas Dyer Edwardes gave the City of Preston some thirty-four acres of land, later developed into Edwardes Lake Park. Today the suburb mixes established brick and weatherboard homes with newer developments, and is served by the Edwardes Street and Broadway shopping strips.

7. 7

   Berwick, VIC

   Population 50,298 · Median income $2,113/wk · SEIFA 1043

   Berwick lies about 41 kilometres south-east of central Melbourne, within the City of Casey. An early leaseholder, Robert Gardiner, named it after his birthplace of Berwick-on-Tweed on the Scottish border. The district began as part of the Cardinia Creek pastoral run, and subdivision from 1854 brought a store, post office, hotel and a flour mill, with wheat, barley and potatoes giving way over time to dairying and cheese-making. The Berwick Agricultural Society, traced back to 1848, is among the oldest farming societies in Victoria. A quarry opened in 1859 to supply ballast for the railway that arrived in 1877; its worked-out pit is now the Wilson Botanic Park. The Mechanics' Institute and Free Library dates from 1862, and the poplars lining High Street were planted as an Avenue of Honour to the district's First World War dead. Parts of the 1959 film On the Beach were shot locally, and several streets carry the names of its cast. As Melbourne spread eastward late in the twentieth century the surrounding farmland was subdivided and the population grew quickly through the 1990s and 2000s. Berwick was the home of Edwin 'Teddy' Flack, Australia's first Olympian, who won two running golds at the 1896 Athens Games and is buried in the local cemetery.

8. 8

   Werribee, VIC

   Population 50,027 · Median income $1,645/wk · SEIFA 951

   Werribee is a fast-growing suburb on Melbourne's south-western edge, about thirty-two kilometres from the city and the administrative centre of the City of Wyndham. It sits on the Werribee River roughly midway between Melbourne and Geelong, and takes its name from an Aboriginal word of the Wathawurrung and Boonwurrung languages said to mean 'backbone' or 'spine'. Laid out as a farming township in the 1850s, it was first called Wyndham and was renamed Werribee in 1904, by which time the Melbourne-to-Geelong railway had given it a station. The grand pastoral estate of Thomas Chirnside survives as Werribee Park, and the suburb is best known today for that mansion and its gardens, the Victoria State Rose Garden, and the Werribee Open Range Zoo.

9. 9

   Glen Waverley, VIC

   Population 42,642 · Median income $1,918/wk · SEIFA 1079

   Glen Waverley lies about 19 km south-east of central Melbourne and is the council seat of the City of Monash. Once orchard and farming country settled from the mid-nineteenth century, its post office opened in 1885 under the name Black Flat before the suburb was renamed Glen Waverley in 1921; the 'Waverley' is borrowed from a Sir Walter Scott novel. Rapid post-war development through the 1950s to 1970s filled it with houses on generously sized blocks, many now being renewed through subdivision. It was also home to Victoria's first McDonald's, opened in 1973 and for a time the longest-surviving in the country. Today Glen Waverley is a busy commercial and transport hub, anchored by The Glen shopping centre and the terminus of the Glen Waverley railway line.

10. 10

    Sunbury, VIC

    Population 38,851 · Median income $1,925/wk · SEIFA 1000

    Sunbury is a satellite town on the north-western fringe of Melbourne, within the City of Hume. It lies on the country of the Wurundjeri people, for whom a recorded name for the district is Koorakoorakup. Settlers arrived in the 1830s, and the brothers William and Samuel Jackson named the township after Sunbury-on-Thames in England when it was laid out in the 1850s. Sunbury's enduring claim to fame is Rupertswood, the grand mansion the Clarke family built in the 1870s: during the touring English cricket team's visit at Christmas 1882, Lady Clarke burnt a bail and presented the ashes in a small urn to the captain, Ivo Bligh — the origin of cricket's storied Ashes. The estate is now Salesian College, and in the early 1970s the district hosted the well-remembered Sunbury Pop Festival. Today it is a fast-growing commuter town close to Melbourne Airport.

11. 11

    St Albans (Vic.), VIC

    Population 38,042 · Median income $1,205/wk · SEIFA 866

    St Albans is a large, multicultural suburb about 17 kilometres north-west of central Melbourne, within the City of Brimbank. It was laid out as a township in 1887, when the Cosmopolitan Land and Banking Company subdivided the land during a speculative boom. The company's manager, Alfred Padley, arranged with Victorian Railways for a station, and insisted it be named St Albans after his family's connection with St Albans Cathedral in England. A post office followed in 1888, and the settlement grew slowly as a dormitory suburb for the factories of nearby Sunshine and Deer Park. After the Second World War its population surged with the arrival of migrants from Malta, Italy and the former Yugoslavia, who built a cluster of Orthodox and Catholic churches. More recent decades have brought a large Vietnamese community, and St Albans today is among Melbourne's most diverse suburbs.

12. 12

    Frankston, VIC

    Population 37,331 · Median income $1,387/wk · SEIFA 953

    Frankston sits on the eastern shore of Port Phillip about 39 km south-east of central Melbourne, and is the administrative heart of the City of Frankston. The land is the Country of the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nation, long an important fishing ground and meeting place. A seaside destination since the 1880s, the suburb has one of Victoria's most popular and cleanest swimming beaches and is often called the 'gateway to the Mornington Peninsula' for the wine-and-tourism region just to its south. The origin of the name is uncertain, with several competing theories; a popular one links it to Frank Liardet, an early settler who took up land here in 1847. Official land sales established the village in 1854.

13. 13

    Hoppers Crossing, VIC

    Population 37,216 · Median income $1,580/wk · SEIFA 945

    Hoppers Crossing is a large residential suburb in Melbourne's outer south-west, roughly 24 kilometres from the central city and part of the City of Wyndham. The wider district lies on the Country of the Boonwurrung and Wathaurong peoples, who belong to the Kulin nation, and whose traditional lands took in the volcanic plains around the Werribee River. The suburb takes its name from Elizabeth Hopper, who worked as a gatekeeper at the level crossing on what is now the Werribee railway line, opening and closing the heavy wooden gates whenever a train passed. She and her husband Stephen, a long-serving railway ganger, raised their large family nearby. Until the 1960s the area was mostly open farmland, but it grew quickly from the 1970s as Melbourne expanded westward, gaining its first primary school and railway station around 1970. Today it is a major suburban centre, anchored by the sprawling Pacific Werribee shopping complex.

14. 14

    Truganina, VIC

    Population 36,305 · Median income $2,126/wk · SEIFA 1020

15. 15

    Mount Waverley, VIC

    Population 35,340 · Median income $2,066/wk · SEIFA 1092

    Mount Waverley lies about 16 kilometres south-east of central Melbourne in the City of Monash. Assistant Surveyor Eugene Bellairs set out the district, then part of the Parish of Mulgrave, on a grid of straight roads exactly a mile apart in 1853, and the post office followed in 1905. The suburb is known for heritage streets laid out in the 1930s, among them the ambitious Glen Alvie estate near Mount Waverley Village, which was planned as a country-club garden suburb with tennis courts, a bowling green and palm-lined Sherwood Park; its original streets were laid in concrete rather than asphalt and survive much as they were. The Great Depression stalled building, and houses only rose in earnest from the early 1950s as Melbourne spread eastward. The much-loved Melbourne street directory Melway was first produced in a Mount Waverley garage in 1966. Today the suburb is a hub for electronics and IT firms, has a strong Chinese, Greek and Italian community, and keeps generous bushland reserves along Damper and Scotchmans Creeks.

16. 16

    Mildura, VIC

    Population 34,565 · Median income $1,295/wk · SEIFA 909

    Mildura is a city on the Murray River in the far north-west of Victoria, the largest centre of the Sunraysia district and close to the borders with New South Wales and South Australia. It lies on the lands of the Latji Latji and Ngintait peoples, and its name, taken from an early sheep station, is thought to come from an Aboriginal word, though its meaning is uncertain. In 1887 the Canadian-American engineer George Chaffey founded what is often called Australia's first irrigation colony here, turning dry mallee country into orchards and vineyards. Today Mildura is famed for its grapes, dried fruit and citrus, grown under near-constant sunshine, while paddle steamers and river cruises keep its Murray heritage alive.

17. 17

    Preston (Vic.), VIC

    Population 33,790 · Median income $1,844/wk · SEIFA 1040

    Preston is an established suburb about 9 km north-east of central Melbourne, within the City of Darebin. The area was first surveyed by Robert Hoddle in 1837, and its earliest settlement — named Irishtown after its first permanent resident arrived in 1841 — grew along High Street. When Edward Wood opened a store in 1850, members of a Baptist congregation meeting there chose to rename the district after Preston, a village in Sussex they remembered fondly. A post office followed in 1856. Preston developed a strong industrial character through the later nineteenth century, with tanneries, potteries, brickworks and bacon-curing factories drawing on local clay and farmland. The railway reached the suburb in 1889 and a tram line to the city opened in 1920, and Preston was proclaimed a city in 1926. The Northland Shopping Centre opened in 1966. Today Preston is known for its diverse, creative community — it inspired Courtney Barnett's song 'Depreston' and is home to 3KND, an Aboriginal-managed community radio station.

18. 18

    Rowville, VIC

    Population 33,571 · Median income $2,205/wk · SEIFA 1056

    Rowville is a large suburb in Melbourne's south-east, within the City of Knox, taking its name from the Row family whose property, Stamford Park, was established in 1882. The Stamford Park homestead still stands and has been restored by the council in recent years. A post office opened in 1905, but the area remained largely agricultural until the post-war decades: in 1955 a pair of entrepreneurs bought the historic Stamford Park estate with plans for housing, shops and display homes around the corner of Stud and Wellington Roads. Rapid growth followed through the 1980s and 1990s. Among the suburb's distinctive developments is Rowville Lakes, proposed by the developer Hooker-Rex in 1975 and noted as an early Victorian example of a lakefront housing estate. The Stud Park Shopping Centre, opened in 1989, remains the commercial hub, anchoring a suburb now well supplied with parks, schools and sporting clubs.

19. 19

    Epping (Vic.), VIC

    Population 33,489 · Median income $1,671/wk · SEIFA 955

    Epping is an outer northern suburb of Melbourne, about 18 kilometres from the central business district, within the City of Whittlesea. A village reserve was surveyed here in 1839, and the settlement was named Epping in 1853 after Epping Forest in England; a hotel had operated since 1844 and a post office opened in 1857. Early farming families, many of Irish origin, worked dairy farms and quarries, and a railway line from Melbourne reached the township in 1889. The original village stood on higher ground west of Darebin Creek, and several of its older buildings were raised in bluestone, plentiful across the surrounding volcanic plains. Major suburban growth followed from the 1970s. Today Epping centres on the Pacific Epping shopping centre and the adjoining Northern Hospital, while the local campus of Melbourne Polytechnic ranks among Victoria's largest providers of training to the agriculture sector.

20. 20

    Noble Park, VIC

    Population 32,257 · Median income $1,382/wk · SEIFA 901

    Noble Park is a richly multicultural suburb about 25 kilometres south-east of central Melbourne, within the City of Greater Dandenong. Its name has an unusual origin: when the land was subdivided in 1909, the developer Allan Buckley nicknamed the estate 'Nobel Park' after the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, having used the site to demonstrate Nobel's explosives — and common usage soon softened it to Noble Park. Early growth was slow, but a community hall, church, school, post office and railway station gradually drew settlers, and the Railway Department later ran a poultry farm and nursery on the fertile former market-garden soil. Post-war migration brought residents from across Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa, giving the suburb its diverse character. Among its landmarks are a Vietnamese Buddhist temple and an aquatic centre, while ancient river red gums — including a National Trust-listed tree at Parkfield Reserve — still stand from its rural past.

21. 21

    Shepparton, VIC

    Population 32,067 · Median income $1,285/wk · SEIFA 897

    Shepparton is a city in the Goulburn Valley of northern Victoria, set on the Goulburn River about 181 kilometres north of Melbourne. It lies on the country of the Yorta Yorta people. The town took its name from Sherbourne Sheppard, who ran a local sheep station from the 1840s, and grew quickly once the railway arrived in 1880. Sitting at the heart of one of Australia's largest irrigation districts, Shepparton is the hub of the Goulburn Valley food bowl, with orchards, dairying and the SPC fruit cannery long central to its economy. The city is also known for its colourful Moooving Art cows dotted around the streets and for the Shepparton Art Museum, home to a major collection of Australian ceramics.

22. 22

    Clyde North, VIC

    Population 31,681 · Median income $2,163/wk · SEIFA 1040

23. 23

    Warrnambool, VIC

    Population 31,308 · Median income $1,385/wk · SEIFA 958

    Warrnambool is a regional city on Victoria's south-west coast, about 265 kilometres from Melbourne, where the Great Ocean Road meets the wide sweep of Lady Bay. It lies on the country of the Dhauwurd Wurrung, or Gunditjmara, people, and takes its name from nearby Mount Warrnambool, a scoria-cone volcano to the north-east. British settlers arrived from the late 1830s and the township was surveyed in 1845. Each winter, southern right whales come close inshore to calve off Logans Beach, watched from a purpose-built viewing platform — the town's signature wildlife event. Its maritime past is told at Flagstaff Hill, a re-created nineteenth-century port village above the harbour.

24. 24

    Doncaster East, VIC

    Population 30,926 · Median income $1,792/wk · SEIFA 1064

25. 25

    Narre Warren South, VIC

    Population 30,909 · Median income $2,158/wk · SEIFA 993

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