Highest-income suburbs in Tasmania

1. 1

   Acton Park (Tas.), TAS

   Population 2,293 · Median income $2,788/wk · SEIFA 1092

2. 2

   Tranmere (Tas.), TAS

   Population 2,218 · Median income $2,435/wk · SEIFA 1089

3. 3

   Sandford (Tas.), TAS

   Population 2,046 · Median income $2,117/wk · SEIFA 1034

4. 4

   West Hobart, TAS

   Population 6,525 · Median income $1,996/wk · SEIFA 1079

   West Hobart is an inner-city suburb set in the hills immediately west of central Hobart, its steep streets lined with Victorian and Federation houses prized for their views over the River Derwent. It began as a farming district of orchards, hops and dairies, worked in part by Chinese market gardeners, with a brickworks at the top of Arthur Street and coal mines below Summerhill Road; the slopes of Knocklofty Hill were quarried for sandstone and are now a bushland reserve looked after by the city council. The post office opened in 1892. Long regarded as a working-class quarter, West Hobart shifted character from the 1960s onwards and is today thought of as one of the city's more bohemian corners, home to artists and musicians in its gentrified old cottages.

5. 5

   Mount Stuart (Tas.), TAS

   Population 2,444 · Median income $1,960/wk · SEIFA 1076

6. 6

   Lenah Valley, TAS

   Population 6,522 · Median income $1,931/wk · SEIFA 1044

   Lenah Valley is a suburb of Hobart set in the foothills of Mount Wellington, west of the city centre between Mount Stuart, New Town and the City of Glenorchy. It was known in turn as Kangaroo Bottom, Kangaroo Valley and Sassafras Valley before being brought together as Lenah Valley in 1922; the name takes lenah, recorded as the Muwinina word for kangaroo. The eastern end was among the earliest parts settled, with the first land grants issued for farming in 1817, and the Newlands manor house of the late 1830s set a tone of orchards and quality homes for the surrounding district. In 1831 James Sherwin established one of Australia's earliest commercial potteries along Pottery Road. Lady Jane Franklin bought a tract of land here in 1839 to build a museum and botanical garden she called Ancanthe, from the Greek for 'blooming valley'; the sandstone museum, raised in the Greek revival style, opened in 1843, and the Art Society of Tasmania has worked from the Lady Franklin Gallery since 1949. The suburb's landmarks today include Calvary Hospital, the Pura Milk factory, John Turnbull Park and the bushland of Ancanthe Park around the gallery.

7. 7

   Sandy Bay, TAS

   Population 12,315 · Median income $1,915/wk · SEIFA 1083

   Sandy Bay is an affluent waterfront suburb of Hobart, lying immediately south of the city centre along the River Derwent. It is home to the main campus of the University of Tasmania and to Wrest Point, the hotel and casino tower that opened in 1973 as Australia's first legal casino and remains a landmark on the city's skyline. A string of small beaches — among them Nutgrove and Long Beach — line its foreshore, and several of Hobart's well-known private schools are based in the suburb. Its leafy streets and harbour outlook have long made it one of the city's most sought-after addresses.

8. 8

   Battery Point, TAS

   Population 2,096 · Median income $1,891/wk · SEIFA 1102

   Battery Point is one of Hobart's oldest and most intact historic neighbourhoods, set on a rise immediately south of the city centre and waterfront in Tasmania. Its narrow streets are lined with colonial-era cottages and merchants' houses, centred on the small circle of workers' cottages at Arthur Circus, and it adjoins the Salamanca Place arts and market precinct. The suburb takes its name from a coastal gun battery established there in 1818; the guns were removed in the 1870s and the site became Princes Park. Much of the area's 19th-century character survives, having been protected from redevelopment in the early 1970s.

9. 9

   Margate (Tas.), TAS

   Population 4,239 · Median income $1,886/wk · SEIFA 1024

   Margate is a coastal town in southern Tasmania, strung along the Channel Highway between the D'Entrecasteaux Channel and the Snug Tiers, about 7km south of Kingston and 20km from Hobart. It lies on the Country of the Nuenonne people of the Channel and Bruny Island district. British settlers arrived in the mid-19th century, and the township was gazetted in 1866. Orchards and coastal shipping once shaped the economy, while today it leans on retail, hospitality and aquaculture, including salmon processing and a long-running shipyard. Its best-known curiosity is the Margate Train, a preserved locomotive and its carriages now housing small shops beside an old apple packing shed, and nearby Dru Point park looks out over North-West Bay.

10. 10

    East Launceston, TAS

    Population 2,270 · Median income $1,885/wk · SEIFA 1045

11. 11

    Lauderdale, TAS

    Population 2,592 · Median income $1,877/wk · SEIFA 1038

12. 12

    Old Beach, TAS

    Population 4,394 · Median income $1,865/wk · SEIFA 994

    Old Beach is a riverside locality on the eastern bank of the River Derwent, in the Brighton municipality north of Hobart, Tasmania. Largely residential with a rural fringe, it is framed by green, hilly country and looks across the water to the suburbs on the river's far bank. The East Derwent Highway runs through it, linking the locality to the city downstream. An old sandstone quarry, worked in the late 1980s, lies near its heart, and the Baskerville Raceway motor-racing circuit is a short drive away. Old Beach was gazetted as a locality in 1970, though a post office had served the district since 1866.

13. 13

    Taroona, TAS

    Population 3,121 · Median income $1,845/wk · SEIFA 1076

    Taroona is a leafy residential suburb on the River Derwent between Hobart and Kingston; although it sits on the edge of Hobart, it falls within the municipality of Kingborough. Its name is said to come from a Mouheneener word for the chiton, a small shellfish found on the rocks along its shore. The area was first known to European settlers as Crayfish Point and was farmed through the nineteenth century, before Clarendon Lord built a homestead he called Taroona in the 1890s, complete with tea rooms overlooking the Derwent. Taroona has several beaches and the dramatic Alum Cliffs walk, but its best-known landmark is the Shot Tower — a 48-metre sandstone tower built by Joseph Moir in 1870 and one of Tasmania's most distinctive historic buildings.

14. 14

    North Hobart, TAS

    Population 2,600 · Median income $1,823/wk · SEIFA 1045

    North Hobart is an inner suburb lying directly north of central Hobart, strung along Elizabeth Street as it runs out of the city towards New Town and beyond. It is best known for its restaurant strip: the stretch of Elizabeth Street between Tasma and Federal Streets is packed with cafes and restaurants spanning Italian, Indian, Thai, Japanese, Mexican and more — a smaller southern cousin to Melbourne's Lygon Street. Anchoring the suburb are the State Cinema, Tasmania's largest independent cinema, and the North Hobart Oval, one of the city's larger sporting grounds and a long-time home of Australian rules football in Hobart. Two well-known schools, Elizabeth College and The Friends' School, are also here, and a 2004 makeover widened the footpaths and lined the main street with trees.

15. 15

    Blackmans Bay, TAS

    Population 7,688 · Median income $1,806/wk · SEIFA 1041

    Blackmans Bay is a coastal suburb just south of Hobart, part of the Kingston–Blackmans Bay urban area that forms a satellite town of the Tasmanian capital within the Kingborough municipality. It takes its name from James Blackman, who occupied land here in the 1820s. The suburb curls around a popular sandy beach, at the northern end of which a sea-carved blowhole has eroded into a dramatic rock arch — by local account first noticed when James Baynton tracked his lost dog to its base. Southward, rocks lead out to Flowerpot Point, a favoured fishing spot, while the Suncoast Headlands track follows the clifftops and a steep path drops to fossil-studded Fossil Cove. Kingston Beach lies immediately to the north.

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    South Hobart, TAS

    Population 5,886 · Median income $1,787/wk · SEIFA 1063

    South Hobart is widely regarded as Hobart's first suburb, an inner enclave tucked between the city centre and the slopes of Mount Wellington. It was settled early by merchant and professional families wanting to escape the bustle of colonial Hobart Town. The suburb is home to the Cascade Brewery, Australia's oldest, and to the Cascades Female Factory, regarded as the nation's most significant historic site associated with convict women, sitting in the shadow of the mountain. High on the foothills, the famous Keen's Curry sign — white-painted stones first laid out in 1905 to mark Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee — still looks down over the rooftops. Henry Hunter's All Saints' Anglican Church dates from 1858, platypus still frequent the Hobart Rivulet, and the acclaimed novelist Richard Flanagan has called the suburb home.

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    Park Grove, TAS

    Population 2,613 · Median income $1,766/wk · SEIFA 1009

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    Howrah, TAS

    Population 9,545 · Median income $1,690/wk · SEIFA 1021

    Howrah is a beachside suburb on Hobart's Eastern Shore, in the City of Clarence, lying east of Bellerive with views across the River Derwent to the city from Howrah Beach. Clarence Street runs through its centre, separating the hillside homes from the beachside flats. The suburb takes its name from Howrah House, a property established on the Clarence Plains in the 1830s by a retired Indian Army officer, who borrowed the name from Howrah, a place near Calcutta in India. Long a quiet rural district, it was formally gazetted as a locality in 1963 and has since grown into one of the Eastern Shore's larger residential suburbs, with Wentworth Park a hub for local sport and Shoreline Plaza its main shopping centre.

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    Mount Nelson, TAS

    Population 2,749 · Median income $1,687/wk · SEIFA 1056

    Mount Nelson is a leafy residential suburb in the hills just south of central Hobart, shared between the City of Hobart and Kingborough Council. The mountain it sits on was named in 1811 by Governor Lachlan Macquarie after the brig HMS Lady Nelson, a vessel central to the early European exploration of Van Diemen's Land that had carried Hobart's first settlers in 1803 — and, despite a common belief, not after the admiral Lord Nelson. The suburb's first road was cut in 1908 to reach the historic Mount Nelson Signal Station, which once relayed semaphore messages between Hobart and Port Arthur. Substantial housing came only after 1945, partly to settle immigrants arriving in the wake of the Second World War, and a local post office operated under the name Rialannah before taking the suburb's name. Today Mount Nelson is valued for its bushland, walking trails and outlooks, and is home to Hobart College, one of the city's public senior colleges.

20. 20

    Legana, TAS

    Population 4,719 · Median income $1,643/wk · SEIFA 991

    Legana is a growing residential locality in northern Tasmania's West Tamar district, about 12km north of Launceston and 32km south-east of Beaconsfield, with the Tamar River forming much of its boundary at the point where the estuary turns to fresh water. Its name comes from a palawa word said to mean 'fresh water', echoed by an early homestead called Freshwater. The district began as dairy farms, apple orchards and grazing land, was gazetted as a locality in 1963, and filled with houses from the 1970s and 1980s. Legana became important to Tasmanian wine through the Velo vineyard, first planted in 1966, and the 'Legana' apple was bred here in the early 1940s by crossing Democrat and Delicious varieties.

21. 21

    Austins Ferry, TAS

    Population 2,395 · Median income $1,625/wk · SEIFA 946

22. 22

    Trevallyn, TAS

    Population 4,826 · Median income $1,614/wk · SEIFA 1015

    Trevallyn is a residential suburb on the western edge of Launceston, set above the meeting of the South Esk and Tamar Rivers and split between the Launceston and West Tamar council areas. Gazetted as a locality in 1963, it takes its name from Trevallyn in Cornwall — in the Cornish tongue 'tre' means a town or settlement and the second part derives from a word for a mill. A curiosity of its past is that the local post office of the 1930s used the name spelled backwards, Nyllavert, which still lingers in some old lists of places. The suburb is best known as the gateway to the Cataract Gorge, the dramatic river gorge that is one of Launceston's great natural landmarks, and to the Trevallyn Dam and the bushland of the Trevallyn Nature Recreation Area, used for trail running, horse riding and mountain biking. The novelist Katharine Susannah Prichard spent part of her childhood here, and the Trevallyn Cricket Club has played at the Gorge Road oval since 1929.

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    Geilston Bay, TAS

    Population 3,461 · Median income $1,610/wk · SEIFA 1005

    Geilston Bay is a largely residential suburb of Hobart on the eastern shore of the River Derwent, named after an inlet of the river. The wider Oyster Bay region was home to the Mumirimina people for thousands of years before British colonisation. Its name derives from an early landholding called Geils Town, after Andrew Geils, briefly Commandant of Van Diemen's Land in 1812 and 1813 before he returned to Scotland. For a time the inlet was also known as Limekiln Bay, after the lime kilns that worked at its head from about the 1830s to the 1920s, producing lime for Hobart's early sandstone buildings. The locality also gives its name to the nationally significant Geilston Bay Local Fauna, fossils first uncovered by quarrying in the 1860s. From about 1939 the bay was used to assemble the floating concrete pontoons of the original Hobart Bridge. Today it is a quiet suburb with a boat club, bushland reserves and views of kunanyi / Mount Wellington.

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    Ranelagh, TAS

    Population 1,484 · Median income $1,602/wk · SEIFA 965

    Ranelagh is a small township in the Huon Valley of southern Tasmania, sitting on the edge of Huonville. It was originally called Victoria and took the name Ranelagh after Huonville was formally gazetted as a town in 1891. The surrounding valley became one of Tasmania's noted fruit-growing districts, and Ranelagh grew up among the orchards and, later, vineyards that still shape the local economy. In more recent decades it has also become a quiet residential base for people working in and around Huonville and Hobart. The township is perhaps best known today for hosting the annual Huon Show, a long-running agricultural fair that celebrates the valley's farming heritage and remains one of the area's biggest community gatherings.

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    New Town (Tas.), TAS

    Population 6,781 · Median income $1,596/wk · SEIFA 1019

    New Town is an inner suburb of Hobart, Tasmania, lying about 4 km north of the city centre on the western side of the Derwent estuary beneath kunanyi / Mount Wellington. It is one of the oldest settled parts of the city, with Europeans establishing farms here within about a week of the founding of Hobart at Sullivans Cove in 1804. The suburb retains a notable collection of colonial heritage, including St John's Anglican Church, designed by the colonial architect John Lee Archer and completed in 1835, and Pitt Farm, sometimes described as one of the oldest farmhouses in Australia. Today New Town is a leafy, established residential area, served by a local shopping centre at New Town Plaza.

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