Largest suburbs in Western Australia

1. 1

   Baldivis, WA

   Population 37,697 · Median income $2,096/wk · SEIFA 995

   Baldivis is a fast-growing residential district south of Perth, within the City of Rockingham. Its unusual name was coined by settlers drawn to the area under the Group Settlement Scheme of the 1920s, and is said to derive from three ships that carried migrants to Western Australia in 1922, all within six weeks of one another — the BALranald, the DIogenes and the JerVIS Bay. The three vessels shared more than a season: each was making its maiden voyage, and all had been built in the same shipyard in the same year. Land beside Baldivis Road was once set aside for a tramway linking Jandakot and Karnup to serve the scheme, though it was never built through the town itself. Many local roads, such as Fifty Road, still carry the group numbers of the original settlement blocks. Urban development arrived in the 1990s, when the western portion was rezoned and Stockland opened the first estate, Settlers Hills.

2. 2

   Canning Vale, WA

   Population 34,504 · Median income $2,277/wk · SEIFA 1052

   Canning Vale is a southern suburb of Perth about 22 kilometres from the central business district, split between the City of Canning and the City of Gosnells along Nicholson Road. Its name comes from the Canning River, which runs a few kilometres to the north-east; until 1925 the area was known instead as North Jandakot. Thanks to its swampy ground and unusual abundance of permanent fresh water, Canning Vale stayed a district of market gardens and dairy farms until the late 1970s, and much of what is now housing remained zoned rural until 1994. Today the suburb falls into distinct parts: a large industrial and warehousing precinct in the north, home to the Market City wholesale fresh-produce market, and residential estates with their own shopping centres to the south. Long reliant on buses to nearby rail, Canning Vale gained its own Nicholson Road and Ranford Road stations when the Metronet line opened in 2025. It has a notably diverse population, with sizeable Chinese, Indian and Italian communities.

3. 3

   Ellenbrook, WA

   Population 24,668 · Median income $1,846/wk · SEIFA 952

   Ellenbrook is a planned outer suburb of Perth in the City of Swan, about 28 km north-east of the city centre. It takes its name from the nearby Ellen Brook waterway, itself named after Ellen Stirling, wife of Western Australia's first governor, James Stirling. Before development the area was banksia and sheoak woodland and wetland, used by Whadjuk Noongar people. Following the Swan River Colony's land grants from 1829, the poor sandy soils left much of the future suburb largely unfarmed, and through the twentieth century it carried scattered uses such as the Gnangara pine plantation. Ellenbrook was declared a growth corridor for Perth in 1990 and gazetted as a suburb in 1992, developed as a large public–private joint venture between the state government and private landowners. Its first village, Woodlake, opened in 1995, and the community expanded rapidly across the following decades into a major activity centre for Perth's north-east. The Ellenbrook railway line opened in December 2024, finally linking the suburb to the wider rail network.

4. 4

   Dianella, WA

   Population 24,169 · Median income $1,684/wk · SEIFA 1027

   Dianella is a suburb of Perth in the City of Stirling, north-east of the city centre. It takes its name from Dianella revoluta, a small blue-flowered lily that grew across the area before the houses came. Early growth was slow: the sandy soils of the Banksia sandplain were thought poor for farming, and into the early 20th century the only real development followed Walter Road out to the dairy farms around Morley. Several older localities — North Inglewood, East Yokine, Morley Park and Bedford Park among them — were brought together under the name Dianella in 1958, and suburban housing spread through the 1960s, ranging from modest post-war homes to large modern dwellings. For decades Dianella was the centre of Perth's commercial television industry, hosting several of the city's stations until they moved away in the 2010s. It is also home to long-established Jewish and Greek communities, reflected in its schools, churches and street names.

5. 5

   Thornlie, WA

   Population 23,665 · Median income $1,571/wk · SEIFA 958

   Thornlie is a large residential suburb of Perth, about 15 km south-east of the city centre within the City of Gosnells, with the Canning River running along its northern side. Before European settlement the area would have been used by the local Noongar people. Captain Peter Pégus was granted land here in 1829, calling his holding Coleraine, though his settlement ended after a fire in the 1830s. The suburb's name comes from Thornlie Park, a farm established in 1884 by Frank and Amy James and later run as a productive dairy. After the large estate was auctioned in the 1950s, Thornlie developed as a residential area aimed at middle-income buyers, and is often described as one of Perth's leafy suburbs for its generous block sizes. It is also home to Crestwood, a model housing estate that won national and international recognition in the 1970s as a rare and well-preserved example of Radburn design, in which homes face parkland and pedestrian paths are separated from roads.

6. 6

   Morley, WA

   Population 22,539 · Median income $1,583/wk · SEIFA 980

   Morley sits about 10 kilometres north-east of central Perth in the City of Bayswater, built around the Galleria, one of the city's larger shopping centres. The name appeared on maps near the start of the twentieth century and was adopted when the Morley Park Estate was subdivided after the First World War; it most likely honours Charles William Morley, who farmed in the area in the 1860s and 1870s. The district began as farmland in the early days of the Swan River Colony, and from the late 1950s and early 1960s it grew into a major shopping and residential centre, its suburban streets shaped by town-planning schemes drawn up by the consultant planner Margaret Feilman. The Boans department store was a local landmark until it burnt down in 1986, after which the Galleria was built on the site, opening in 1994. Tonkin Highway was cut through the suburb in 1984. The cricketers Michael and David Hussey and the singer Samantha Jade were all raised in Morley.

7. 7

   Gosnells, WA

   Population 21,149 · Median income $1,254/wk · SEIFA 880

   Gosnells lies about 20 kilometres south-east of central Perth and gives its name to the wider City of Gosnells, holding the council offices, library and railway station at its centre. The Noongar people lived across this country for thousands of years before Europeans arrived, and after 1829 farms began to spread along the Swan and Canning Rivers. In 1862 Charles Gosnell, a Londoner, bought the surrounding land from the Davis family. The gold rushes at Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie around 1890 drew newcomers to Western Australia and sharpened demand for land on Perth's fringe, and a group of developers acquired the holding — then known as Canning Location 16 — from Gosnell's estate. The name Gosnells was adopted for the district in 1907. The suburb sits on the Armadale railway line, with Albany Highway the main road link back towards the city, and shares the warm, dry-summer Mediterranean climate of the rest of Perth. Since 2000, public investment in new council offices, a library and a relocated station has helped revive the town centre. Those who have called Gosnells home include the cricketer Gerald Arthur and the gridiron player Mitch Wishnowsky.

8. 8

   Willetton, WA

   Population 19,262 · Median income $2,178/wk · SEIFA 1060

   Willetton is a large southern suburb of Perth, in the City of Canning, about twelve kilometres from the central business district. It takes its name from Henry Willett, of the firm Willett & Co, who settled in the wider district after being granted land there in 1832, though the name Willetton was not fixed in its present position until it was gazetted in 1965. The suburb is built on a flat, sandy stretch of coastal plain once covered with open Banksia woodland and paperbarks marking the edges of shallow seasonal swamps. Its first subdivision opened in the early 1970s under the developer's name Burrendah Heights — preserved today in Burrendah Boulevard and a local primary school — and most of its housing was completed through the 1990s. The Southlands Boulevarde shopping centre anchors the suburb, which is also home to Willetton Senior High School, one of the largest public high schools in Western Australia.

9. 9

   Byford, WA

   Population 18,878 · Median income $2,059/wk · SEIFA 981

   Byford sits on the south-eastern edge of the Perth metropolitan area, within the Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale. Few records survive of the area's first Aboriginal inhabitants, though physical evidence of their presence has turned up at sites across the district. The suburb's earliest name, Beenup, was a settler adaptation of an Aboriginal word linked to the nearby Beenyup Brook, and it was applied to a railway siding after the South Western Railway reached the district in 1892. Gazetted as a townsite in 1906, the settlement was renamed Byford in 1920 through a ballot of residents, who chose it over alternatives such as Beenyup and Glengeorge. For much of the twentieth century brickmaking from the local shale deposits drove the economy. In recent decades Byford has grown rapidly as Perth has expanded southward, and it gained a Metronet rail connection in 2025. Among its attractions are the long-established Cohunu Koala Park and a sculpture trail celebrating the town's history.

10. 10

    Ballajura, WA

    Population 18,459 · Median income $1,726/wk · SEIFA 951

    Ballajura is a residential suburb of Perth, about 14 kilometres north of the city centre and part of the City of Swan. Its story begins in 1905, when Ernest Maltby Kerruish, a migrant from the Isle of Man, took up farmland on the site and named it Ballajora after a farm at Maughold in his homeland; over time the spelling shifted to Ballajura. Kerruish found the soil too poor for his liking and soon moved his operations to a vineyard at nearby Caversham, but the names of his Manx companions, Creer and Eaton, are still remembered in the houses of the local primary school. The suburb as it stands today took shape in the 1980s, when the Lakeshore and Lakes Estate subdivisions were laid out around a series of landscaped lakes and parks, drawing a wave of new family homes.

11. 11

    Scarborough (WA), WA

    Population 17,605 · Median income $2,107/wk · SEIFA 1080

    Scarborough is a beachside suburb on Perth's Indian Ocean coast, about 13 km north-west of the city centre in the City of Stirling. Its wide surf beach is one of the metropolitan area's best known, and a major redevelopment of the foreshore has added a landmark beachfront pool, an amphitheatre and a strip of bars and restaurants. The high-rise Rendezvous Hotel — built in 1986 as Observation City — still rises above the sand, and the beach regularly hosts surf-lifesaving championships. The suburb is named after the seaside resort of Scarborough in North Yorkshire, England.

12. 12

    Australind, WA

    Population 15,988 · Median income $1,856/wk · SEIFA 961

    Australind sits on the Leschenault Inlet about 12 km north-east of Bunbury, in the Shire of Harvey. Before European settlement the area was the Country of the Elaap and Pindjarup people of the Noongar Nation. Its unusual name blends 'Australia' and 'India', reflecting an early plan to breed horses here for the British army in India. In 1840 the Western Australian Land Company bought 103,000 acres intending to build an English-style village, complete with a town square, church, school and mill; Marshall Waller Clifton arrived in 1841 to lead some 440 settlers. The scheme soon faltered on poor soils and a difficult climate, the settlers drifted away, and the grand plan was formally abandoned in 1875. Quiet waterside living has since grown up along the inlet.

13. 13

    Duncraig, WA

    Population 15,982 · Median income $2,394/wk · SEIFA 1092

    Duncraig is a leafy residential suburb in Perth's northern suburbs, about 16 km from the city centre between Marmion Avenue and the Mitchell Freeway, within the City of Joondalup. Little was developed here before the 1960s; the Scottish-sounding name Duncraig was approved in 1969 and first used to promote the new estates. Most of the suburb was built through the mid-1970s, its schools, library and shopping centres rising almost in step with the housing, and in 1986 the extension of the Mitchell Freeway linked it directly to central Perth. One of Duncraig's quirks lies in its north-western corner, where a cluster of streets is named after Gilbert and Sullivan operas and their characters — Gilbert Road meets Sullivan Road near Savoy Place and Pinafore Court. The suburb has produced some notable residents, including Formula One driver Daniel Ricciardo and Melanie Perkins, who began the graphic-design company Canva in her family's Duncraig home.

14. 14

    Landsdale, WA

    Population 15,401 · Median income $2,439/wk · SEIFA 1048

    Landsdale is an outer northern suburb of Perth, in the City of Wanneroo, Western Australia. For most of its history it was a district of market gardens and small rural holdings on the city's fringe, and it kept that semi-rural character well into the 1990s. From the late 1990s the market gardens gave way to housing estates, and Landsdale grew quickly into a mixed suburb of homes, shops and light industry. Its everyday hub is the Landsdale Gardens precinct, with the Landsdale Forum shopping centre, parks, lakes and walking trails close by, while the Perth International Telecommunications Centre occupies the suburb's eastern end. Several primary schools serve the area's young families.

15. 15

    Rockingham (WA), WA

    Population 15,312 · Median income $1,169/wk · SEIFA 918

    Rockingham is a coastal city on the southern edge of the Perth metropolitan area in Western Australia, about 47 kilometres south of central Perth on the shores of Cockburn Sound. It lies on the Country of the Noongar people. The town takes its name from the Rockingham, a ship chartered by the settler Thomas Peel that arrived in 1830 and was later wrecked offshore, prompting nearby campers to adopt the name. Surveyed in 1847, Rockingham grew as a timber-exporting port until the opening of Fremantle's inner harbour drew trade away in the 1890s. It later reinvented itself as a seaside resort and is now a satellite city of Perth, known for its beaches, the dolphins and islands of Shoalwater Bay, and the naval base on nearby Garden Island.

16. 16

    Bayswater (WA), WA

    Population 15,288 · Median income $2,037/wk · SEIFA 1052

    Bayswater is a riverside suburb just north of the Swan River, a short way north-east of central Perth and the seat of the City of Bayswater. The Mooro group of the Whadjuk Noongar people, led by Yellagonga, lived along this stretch of the river, drawing fresh water, food and trade from it. After the Swan River Colony's founding the riverfront land was carved into narrow 'ribbon grants' in 1830, but repeated floods drove off most of the early settlers and the area lay quiet for decades. The Fremantle–Guildford railway of 1881 finally opened it up, and an 1880s subdivision, the Bayswater Estate, gave the suburb both its layout and its name — thought to echo Bayswater in London. Market gardens, dairies and brickyards slowly gave way to suburban streets; a curious survivor is an olive tree, said to date from the 1840s, that still features on the council's crest.

17. 17

    Piara Waters, WA

    Population 15,029 · Median income $2,477/wk · SEIFA 1074

18. 18

    Como (WA), WA

    Population 14,786 · Median income $1,780/wk · SEIFA 1073

    Como is a riverside suburb of Perth on the southern shore of the Swan River, within the City of South Perth and divided by the busy Canning Highway. The land was first taken up in 1891 by Edmund Hugh Comer, a farmer from Christchurch in New Zealand, and subdivided in 1905 as the Como Estate — a name thought to derive either from the owner's surname or from the lake and town of Como in northern Italy. The suburb is served by the Canning Bridge railway station on the Mandurah line, a major interchange at its southern edge, and is home to several schools including the private Penrhos College. Today Como is an established, leafy residential area prized for its river frontage and its easy access across the Canning Bridge to central Perth and Fremantle.

19. 19

    Halls Head, WA

    Population 14,474 · Median income $1,686/wk · SEIFA 985

    Halls Head is a coastal suburb of Mandurah, lying immediately west of the city centre on the Western Australian coast. It forms the northern and most populated part of a low-lying island ringed by water — the Mandurah Estuary to the north, the Peel-Harvey Estuary to the east, the Dawesville Channel to the south, and the Indian Ocean to the west. The locality takes its name from Henry Edward Hall, who took up a large land grant to farm here in the 1830s and whose son bore the memorable name William Shakespeare Hall. Hall's Cottage, a single-storey stone house the family built in 1833, survives as the only early settler's cottage left in the district. For much of the twentieth century Halls Head was a quiet beach and fishing resort, and from the 1980s it grew rapidly into a series of waterfront canal estates.

20. 20

    Wellard, WA

    Population 14,127 · Median income $2,115/wk · SEIFA 1006

21. 21

    Aveley, WA

    Population 13,998 · Median income $2,165/wk · SEIFA 1012

22. 22

    Clarkson, WA

    Population 13,904 · Median income $1,761/wk · SEIFA 965

23. 23

    Balga, WA

    Population 13,864 · Median income $1,299/wk · SEIFA 892

24. 24

    Perth (WA), WA

    Population 13,670 · Median income $1,960/wk · SEIFA 1083

25. 25

    Port Kennedy, WA

    Population 13,477 · Median income $1,921/wk · SEIFA 951

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