Highest-income suburbs in South Australia

1. 1

   Medindie, SA

   Population 1,175 · Median income $3,750/wk · SEIFA 1148

   Medindie is a small, established suburb just north of North Adelaide, sitting against the Adelaide Park Lands about two kilometres from the South Australian capital's centre. It is bounded by Robe Terrace, Northcote Terrace, Nottage Terrace and Main North Road, and is mainly residential, known for its gracious homes and a scattering of nineteenth-century mansions. Among them is Willyama on The Avenue, named with an Aboriginal word linked to the Broken Hill district by Charles Rasp, the boundary rider who pegged the claim that founded that mining city. Nearby stands The Briars, an ornate residence built for George Hawker in 1856. The suburb is also home to Wilderness School, a long-established girls' school whose origins trace back to a small school opened by the Brown sisters in 1884.

2. 2

   Roxby Downs, SA

   Population 3,671 · Median income $3,142/wk · SEIFA 1004

3. 3

   Craigburn Farm, SA

   Population 3,099 · Median income $2,944/wk · SEIFA 1134

4. 4

   Stonyfell, SA

   Population 1,266 · Median income $2,859/wk · SEIFA 1138

   Stonyfell is a leafy suburb in the foothills east of Adelaide, in the City of Burnside, threaded by creeks and walking tracks. The area was home to the Kaurna people before European settlement. Its name was coined in 1858 by Annie Montgomery Martin, who called the property Stonyfell, a fell being an old English word for high, uncultivated ground. Henry Septimus Clark planted the first vineyard here that year and built stone wine cellars into the hillside, and a quarry had already opened nearby in 1837. Winemaking and stone, along with a noted olive company, shaped the suburb for over a century, and a quarry still works the hills today. St Peter's Girls' School occupies the grand old Chiverton mansion, while Ferguson Conservation Park preserves a pocket of native bush.

5. 5

   Millswood, SA

   Population 2,173 · Median income $2,836/wk · SEIFA 1128

   Millswood is a gracious inner-southern suburb of Adelaide in the City of Unley, named after the Scotsman Samuel Mills, who reached the colony in 1839 and farmed land he called Ravenswood. Goodwood Road runs through the heart of the suburb on its way to the city, while the Belair railway line skirts its edge; the local Millswood station closed in the 1990s but was reopened in 2014. Sport and leisure shape much of the suburb's character, from the croquet, lawn bowls and tennis clubs to the broad green of Goodwood Oval with its heritage grandstand. Tucked within the fork of the railway lines is SASMEE Park, home to the South Australian Society of Model and Experimental Engineers, whose miniature trains have delighted local families for generations.

6. 6

   Malvern (SA), SA

   Population 2,713 · Median income $2,655/wk · SEIFA 1129

   Malvern is an established inner-southern suburb of Adelaide, part of the City of Unley, bordered by Unley and Parkside to the north, Highgate to the east, Kingswood to the south and Unley Park to the west. Many of its streets are shaded by jacaranda trees and lined with the single-storey colonial villas that give the suburb its gracious, settled character. A number of those streets carry the names of places in the United Kingdom, among them Dover, Sheffield and Cambridge. Malvern is best known as the birthplace of Howard Florey, later Baron Florey, who was born here in 1898 and went on to share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for his part in the discovery of penicillin. The operatic baritone Arnold Matters was also born in the suburb.

7. 7

   Beaumont (SA), SA

   Population 2,731 · Median income $2,577/wk · SEIFA 1137

   Beaumont is a historic, well-to-do suburb in the eastern foothills of Adelaide, within the City of Burnside. It was laid out as a planned village by Sir Samuel Davenport in 1848, though high land prices meant it was slow to fill, and only with the city's steady spread did its streets take shape. At the heart of the early village lay the Beaumont Common, an English-style common once fenced and reserved for villagers and today preserved as a public park. Nearby stands Beaumont House, a gracious residence built around 1850 for Augustus Short, the first Anglican Bishop of Adelaide, and now in the care of the National Trust of South Australia. In recent times the suburb has crept south-east towards the face of the Adelaide Hills.

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   Aldgate, SA

   Population 3,471 · Median income $2,561/wk · SEIFA 1116

9. 9

   Glen Osmond, SA

   Population 2,154 · Median income $2,544/wk · SEIFA 1124

   Glen Osmond is a leafy suburb in the foothills of Adelaide, in the City of Burnside, where the road from the Adelaide Hills descends into the city. Its place in South Australian history is an unusual one: in 1841 silver and lead were discovered here, and the Wheal Gawler and Wheal Watkins mines that followed were among the earliest metal mines worked anywhere in Australia. The mines were busy through the eighteen-forties and again in the eighteen-nineties. At the foot of the hills stood a famous old eucalypt known as the Big Tree, a landmark near which surveyors pegged out one of the district's original sections in 1837. Today Glen Osmond is a quiet residential suburb and a gateway between Adelaide and the hills beyond.

10. 10

    Crafers, SA

    Population 2,006 · Median income $2,530/wk · SEIFA 1119

11. 11

    Colonel Light Gardens, SA

    Population 3,311 · Median income $2,491/wk · SEIFA 1096

    Colonel Light Gardens is a planned garden suburb in the City of Mitcham, about seven kilometres south of central Adelaide. Following a national town-planning tour by the New Zealand planner Charles Reade, the South Australian government set out to create a model garden suburb here, and Reade went on to become the state's first official Town Planner. The suburb is named after Colonel William Light, the first Surveyor-General of Adelaide, and is known for its wide tree-lined streets, rounded corners, ornamental parks and well-kept postwar bungalows. For many years it was administered under its own Garden Suburb Act by an appointed commissioner rather than an ordinary council. Recognised for its heritage, the suburb was placed on the Register of the National Estate and later declared a State Heritage Area.

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    Hewett, SA

    Population 2,961 · Median income $2,439/wk · SEIFA 1043

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    Rose Park, SA

    Population 1,375 · Median income $2,411/wk · SEIFA 1124

    Rose Park is a leafy, tree-lined inner suburb of Adelaide, lying about one kilometre east of the city centre on the very edge of the Adelaide Park Lands, where it borders Victoria Park. Part of the Burnside Council area, it is prized for its handsome nineteenth-century houses, much of which now carry heritage protection. The suburb was laid out in 1878 on land held by the South Australia Company and named after Sir John Rose, who chaired the company for fourteen years during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Its best-known landmark is the Gartrell Memorial Church on Prescott Terrace, a Gothic Revival building designed in 1914 by the architect Herbert Jory and built as a Methodist church the following year. It honours James Gartrell, a parishioner and benefactor who paid for its pipe organ.

14. 14

    Hawthorn (SA), SA

    Population 2,221 · Median income $2,370/wk · SEIFA 1108

15. 15

    Stirling (SA), SA

    Population 3,067 · Median income $2,368/wk · SEIFA 1129

    Stirling is a leafy village in the Adelaide Hills, about 15 kilometres from the centre of Adelaide, named after Edward Stirling, an early South Australian colonist. Unusually for an Australian town, it is famous for its imported European trees — maples, oaks, elms and ashes planted by nineteenth-century residents — which turn brilliant shades of red and gold each April and May and draw visitors up into the hills to see them. Around the autumn display, Stirling offers a cluster of cafes, galleries and gardens, and an old village main street shaded by those same big deciduous trees. The Mount Lofty Botanic Garden and the bushland of Cleland National Park lie close by.

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    Wattle Park, SA

    Population 1,885 · Median income $2,305/wk · SEIFA 1117

    Wattle Park is a small, leafy suburb in Adelaide's eastern foothills, within the City of Burnside and a short distance from the city centre. It is thought to take its name from a property bought in the early eighteen-eighties by George Scarfe, whose former residence later served for some years as a teachers college before becoming the centrepiece of a retirement village. The suburb has a strong link to South Australia's early olive industry: the Stonyfell Olive Company, founded in 1873, planted thousands of olive trees across the surrounding slopes, and its olive-crushing works stood at the western end of what is now Crompton Drive. By the nineteen-thirties the company was the largest producer of olive oil in the state. Today Wattle Park is a quiet residential pocket of established homes and gardens, with parks and well-regarded schools close by in neighbouring suburbs.

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    Hazelwood Park, SA

    Population 1,953 · Median income $2,300/wk · SEIFA 1127

    Hazelwood Park is a gracious, upper-class suburb in the City of Burnside, about five kilometres east of central Adelaide where the plains meet the foot of the Adelaide Hills. Before European settlement the area was part of the traditional lands of the Kaurna people. A village called Knightsbridge was laid out here in 1848, and the suburb's first home, the half-buried Knightsbridge House, was built by a local grocer in 1854 to cope with the fierce summers. The leafy parkland at its centre began as the private Hazelwood estate, named for an English school, and was set aside as a public reserve in 1915. The Burnside Council later secured the park outright, and in 1966 opened the George Bolton Swimming Centre, still a summer favourite. Heritage homes and old gum trees define the suburb today.

18. 18

    Tusmore, SA

    Population 1,503 · Median income $2,298/wk · SEIFA 1108

    Tusmore is a quiet, leafy suburb in the inner east of Adelaide, in the City of Burnside. It takes its name from the pastoralist William Rogers, who settled in the area in 1839 and named his land after his birthplace in Oxfordshire, England. For many years the district remained semi-rural, until in 1911 a large section was subdivided for housing; several of its streets still carry the names of the board members who oversaw the sale, among them Bakewell, Barr-Smith, Fisher and Stirling. At the heart of the suburb lies Tusmore Park, a much-loved reserve shared with neighbouring Heathpool that offers a paddling pool for children, tennis courts, a playground and barbecues, with the bed of First Creek winding through. Gracious older homes and mature street trees complete the picture.

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    Toorak Gardens, SA

    Population 2,604 · Median income $2,286/wk · SEIFA 1113

    Toorak Gardens is a leafy, mostly residential suburb a couple of kilometres east of central Adelaide, long regarded as one of South Australia's most prestigious addresses. Tree-lined streets are framed by detached villas, Tudor Revival and bungalow homes built across the 1920s and 1930s on generous garden allotments. The name Toorak is said to come from an Aboriginal word, variously linked to tea-tree springs or reedy ground, and the suburb grew on former farmland once held by the Fergusson and Prescott families. Its central green, Fergusson Square, was laid out after the First World War and remains the main park. Nearby, the arthouse Trak Cinema and a cluster of shops and restaurants give the quiet streets a village focus, close to the boutiques of Burnside Village.

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    St Peters (SA), SA

    Population 3,231 · Median income $2,266/wk · SEIFA 1120

21. 21

    Belair, SA

    Population 4,718 · Median income $2,265/wk · SEIFA 1103

    Belair lies in the south-eastern foothills of Adelaide, at the base of the Mount Lofty Ranges about 10 kilometres from the city. Before European settlement the Kaurna people knew the area as piraldi, and the Kaurna and Peramangk peoples used the hills for seasonal hunting and gathering. The suburb is dominated by Belair National Park, proclaimed in 1891 as the first national park in South Australia and the second-oldest in the country. The park grew out of an early colonial Government Farm, where Old Government House was built between 1858 and 1860 as a summer residence for the colony's governors. A campaign by residents in the 1880s saved the land from subdivision and turned it into public parkland. Today Belair is a quiet, leafy suburb prized for its bushland setting and historic railway station.

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    Burnside (SA), SA

    Population 3,060 · Median income $2,257/wk · SEIFA 1120

    Burnside is a leafy residential suburb in the eastern foothills of Adelaide, about 7.5 km from the city centre and the namesake of the City of Burnside. It was established by Peter Anderson, a Scottish settler who took up farmland beside Second Creek in 1839; when the land passed to William Randall in 1848, he had the town laid out along the creek. The name joins 'burn', the Scots word for a creek, with 'side', for the farm's position on the side of Second Creek. A post office opened in 1863 and a small village had formed by the 1870s. The suburb is well supplied with parkland — among them Hazelwood and Newland Parks — and keeps a notable older landmark in the Georgian-style Feathers Hotel.

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    Angle Vale, SA

    Population 4,051 · Median income $2,248/wk · SEIFA 1013

24. 24

    Coromandel Valley, SA

    Population 4,380 · Median income $2,241/wk · SEIFA 1078

25. 25

    Hyde Park (SA), SA

    Population 1,660 · Median income $2,208/wk · SEIFA 1118

    Hyde Park is an affluent, inner-southern suburb of Adelaide, set just a few kilometres from the city within the City of Unley. It is regarded as one of the city's most prestigious addresses, with a stock of gracious old homes that count among Adelaide's most expensive and elegant. The heart of the suburb is King William Road, a fashionable strip of boutiques, cafes and restaurants that draws shoppers from across the metropolitan area. Millswood railway station and the Belair railway line lie close at hand, and until the 1950s a tram service also ran out to the suburb. Despite the name, the area is said to take its title not from the famous London park but from John Hyde, an early colonist who arrived in the colony in 1839, leaving a quietly English stamp on this leafy pocket of Adelaide.

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