Largest suburbs in Queensland

1. 1

   Southport (Qld), QLD

   Population 36,786 · Median income $1,268/wk · SEIFA 968

   Southport is the most populous suburb of the Gold Coast and home to the city's central business district, set where the Nerang River empties into The Broadwater at the southern end of Moreton Bay. First known as Nerang Creek Heads, it was renamed Southport as the southernmost port of colonial Queensland, surveyed in the 1870s as a timber port shipping logs north to Brisbane. Its fortunes turned in the 1880s when the Queensland Governor, Sir Anthony Musgrave, chose it for his summer residence — the 'Summer Place' — sealing the township's reputation as the colony's pre-eminent seaside resort, soon served by a pier and a railway. Long associated with grand schools such as The Southport School and St Hilda's, Southport is today the Gold Coast's civic heart, with the G:link tram, the Broadwater Parklands, and a riverside university-and-hospital precinct.

2. 2

   Buderim, QLD

   Population 31,430 · Median income $1,729/wk · SEIFA 1036

   Buderim is a Sunshine Coast town set on a 180-metre mountain that looks out over the southern communities of the region. Its name is usually thought to come from a Kabi Kabi word, Badderam, for the hairpin honeysuckle, though it has also been linked to a Yugambeh word, budherahm, said to mean sacred or spiritual. In 1862 Tom Petrie travelled from Brisbane with Turrbal and Kabi Kabi guides in search of cedar and ascended the mountain, opening the area to timber-getters who cut its stands of beech and red cedar. Once the plateau was cleared, its rich red volcanic soil proved well suited to farming — most famously ginger, the crop for which Buderim became known, along with coffee. It remains a leafy hinterland town today.

3. 3

   Caboolture, QLD

   Population 29,534 · Median income $1,310/wk · SEIFA 878

   Caboolture is a town and suburb on the northern bank of the Caboolture River, about 44 kilometres north of Brisbane in the City of Moreton Bay. It marks the northern edge of the greater Brisbane commuter network, where the suburban trains give way to the North Coast line. The Gubbi Gubbi people are recognised as the traditional custodians of the district, and the name is said to come from a Yugarabul word for the place of the carpet snake. European settlement followed in 1842, when land around the former Moreton Bay penal colony was opened to free settlers; by the mid-1860s local pastoralists were trying their hand at sugar cane and cotton. A small township grew from 1867 as a supply point for settlers and for miners trekking north to the Gympie goldfields, and from 1868 it was a stop on the Cobb and Co coach run between Brisbane, Gympie and Maryborough. The shire was constituted in 1879 and the railway from Brisbane reached the town in 1888. Today Caboolture is a regional hub with a country-market tradition, the Abbey Museum, a historical village and a warplane museum at its airfield. The country singer Keith Urban grew up here after his family moved north when he was a small child.

4. 4

   Upper Coomera, QLD

   Population 27,180 · Median income $1,991/wk · SEIFA 989

   Upper Coomera is a fast-growing suburb in the City of Gold Coast, set on the western side of the M1 Pacific Motorway above the Coomera River. Its name is said to come from the Yugambeh word kumera, a species of wattle. The land was surveyed in 1864, and William Alfred Binstead is recorded as the first European settler the following year. A sugar industry soon took hold, with the nearby Otmoor plantation producing its first refined sugar in 1870. An Anglican church was built in the late 1880s, and a district war memorial was unveiled in 1918 to honour local servicemen. Along with neighbouring Coomera, the suburb has become one of the Gold Coast's principal growth corridors, prized by commuters for its position roughly midway between Southport and Brisbane. Its schools include Upper Coomera State College, Coomera Anglican College and Saint Stephen's College, and the area is home to notably large New Zealand and Māori communities.

5. 5

   Surfers Paradise, QLD

   Population 26,412 · Median income $1,323/wk · SEIFA 996

   Surfers Paradise is a beachside suburb on the Gold Coast in Queensland, roughly 78 km south of Brisbane. It sits on a long stretch of surf beach backed by a beachfront promenade and one of Australia's most recognisable high-rise skylines, which began with the Kinkabool tower in 1959. The area was known as Elston until it was renamed Surfers Paradise in late 1933, and it has grown into one of the country's best-known holiday and nightlife destinations. The Cavill Avenue precinct forms the commercial and tourist heart of the suburb, and the Meter Maids, introduced in 1965, remain an enduring local emblem.

6. 6

   Robina, QLD

   Population 25,659 · Median income $1,758/wk · SEIFA 1035

   Robina is a suburb of the Gold Coast, west of Broadbeach, and one of the first master-planned communities built in Australia. In 1980 the Singaporean developer Robin Loh and the local developer Arthur Earle bought a large tract of former grazing land in the southern Gold Coast and set about turning it into a planned residential and commercial hub, bringing in international urban designers to shape it. The name, gazetted in 1985, joins 'Robin', for Robin Loh, with an 'a' for Arthur Earle. Robina grew quickly into one of the Gold Coast's fastest-developing suburbs, gathering around the Robina Town Centre shopping complex, Robina Stadium, a branch library and the Greg Norman-designed Glades golf course. Bond University, Australia's first private university, has its main campus in the suburb, and Robina sits on the Gold Coast railway line with its own station. Largely built from a blank sheet within a single generation, it remains one of the country's better-known examples of a comprehensively planned community.

7. 7

   Morayfield, QLD

   Population 24,898 · Median income $1,442/wk · SEIFA 903

   Morayfield is a town and suburb in the City of Moreton Bay, around 45 kilometres north of central Brisbane, sitting in the Burpengary Creek catchment with the Bruce Highway and the Caboolture railway line running through it. In 1868 the Brisbane businessman George Raff bought part of the land once held by the failed Caboolture Cotton Company and named it Moray Field, after his native Morayshire in Scotland; the spelling settled as Morayfield from the 1880s. A school opened in the district in 1873, changing names more than once before becoming Morayfield State School, and its original building survives as a heritage-listed landmark, as does the nearby Oaklands Sugar Mill. Morayfield stayed a rural area of dairy and crop farms until the mid-1980s, when the rapid spread of greater Brisbane brought heavy residential development and quick population growth. Today it is a largely residential suburb whose shops gather along Morayfield Road around the Morayfield Shopping Centre, well connected by rail and bus.

8. 8

   Pimpama, QLD

   Population 24,601 · Median income $1,863/wk · SEIFA 974

9. 9

   Redbank Plains, QLD

   Population 24,349 · Median income $1,516/wk · SEIFA 884

10. 10

    North Lakes, QLD

    Population 23,030 · Median income $2,092/wk · SEIFA 1029

    North Lakes is a master-planned suburb in the City of Moreton Bay, north of Brisbane, built around its namesake waterways and the open space of Lake Eden. The area lies in Country long associated with the Yugarabul people. From the 1890s the land carried police horses and then dairy cattle — by the 1920s it was the Allesnik Dairy Farm — and a pineapple plantation worked here into the 1960s, after which government pine plantations covered the ground until the mid-1990s. In 1999 the developers Lend Lease and Lensworth began turning roughly a thousand hectares of former plantation into a planned community of homes, parks, schools and a town centre, with an agreement to build using energy-efficient, solar-oriented housing. Originally part of neighbouring Mango Hill, North Lakes was gazetted as a separate suburb in 2006, taking its name from the estate. The community has since won repeated industry awards for the quality of its master planning.

11. 11

    Forest Lake, QLD

    Population 22,676 · Median income $1,921/wk · SEIFA 997

    Forest Lake is an outer south-western suburb of Brisbane that lies on Yugarabul country. Its centrepiece is a large man-made lake, ringed by parkland and walking and cycling paths, which was completed in 1994. The area's European history reaches back to the late 1870s, when Henry Farley built a homestead on a site now occupied by Homestead Park; in 1881 the property passed to Michael 'Stumpy' Durack and became part of the surrounding Archerfield Station. The original homestead was lost to fire in the 1930s. During the Second World War the locality held a command post for the Darra Ordnance Ammunition Depot, one of the largest such depots in the South West Pacific. The modern suburb began in 1990 as a master-planned community developed by Delfin Lend Lease, and was officially launched the following year by the then Queensland Premier, Wayne Goss. Schools, shops and a lakeside reserve have since grown up around the water.

12. 12

    Kallangur, QLD

    Population 21,761 · Median income $1,456/wk · SEIFA 916

    Kallangur is a suburb in the City of Moreton Bay, north of Brisbane, lying in Yugarabul country. Its name is said to come from an Aboriginal word, kalangoor, recorded as meaning a goodly or satisfactory place — a term drawn from the Kabi (Gubbi Gubbi) language of the wider region. European settlement followed the land's acquisition in 1855 by Thomas Petrie, son of a Scottish migrant family prominent in the early Moreton Bay district. The Old Gympie Road once ran through Kallangur, carrying Cobb & Co coaches on the route between Brisbane and the goldfields at Gympie, and the area grew in the early twentieth century as a staging point on the way to the Redcliffe peninsula, before the Hornibrook Bridge opened in the 1930s. Kallangur State School opened in 1930. More recent decades have brought steady residential growth along the northern corridor, with Anzac Avenue as the suburb's main thoroughfare and a railway station reconnecting it to the wider network.

13. 13

    Narangba, QLD

    Population 20,910 · Median income $2,207/wk · SEIFA 1007

14. 14

    Kirwan, QLD

    Population 20,780 · Median income $1,673/wk · SEIFA 944

15. 15

    Maroochydore, QLD

    Population 20,629 · Median income $1,360/wk · SEIFA 987

    Maroochydore is the commercial heart of Queensland's Sunshine Coast, set where the Maroochy River meets the Coral Sea about 100 kilometres north of Brisbane. Its name comes from a Yuggera-language word, recorded as Muru-kutchi, said to mean red-bill and to refer to the black swans of the river. Long a holiday destination, it has grown into the region's main business and shopping centre, anchored by the riverside Sunshine Plaza and a busy bus interchange. Visitors come for the patrolled surf beaches, the calm river mouth popular with paddlers and families, and easy access to the wider Sunshine Coast. Coastal cafés, parks, and the foreshore boardwalk round out the laid-back appeal.

16. 16

    Coomera, QLD

    Population 20,225 · Median income $1,930/wk · SEIFA 993

17. 17

    Deception Bay, QLD

    Population 19,573 · Median income $1,270/wk · SEIFA 874

18. 18

    Thornlands, QLD

    Population 19,263 · Median income $2,218/wk · SEIFA 1047

19. 19

    Helensvale, QLD

    Population 18,949 · Median income $2,014/wk · SEIFA 1029

    Helensvale is a planned suburb on the northern hinterland fringe of the City of Gold Coast, bounded by the Pacific Motorway to the west and the Coomera River to the north, with Saltwater Creek forming part of its north-eastern edge. The suburb takes its name from a sugar plantation established in the district around 1870 by Arthur Robinson and Ernest White; Helena was the name of White's youngest sister. It was formally gazetted as a locality in 1979 and recognised as a suburb in 2003. Helensvale was the first fully integrated suburb developed on this part of the coast, welcoming its earliest residents in the 1980s with a shopping centre, state primary and secondary schools, a golf course and a bowls club. Today it functions as a major transport hub: its station is the only point on the Gold Coast where heavy rail, the G:link light rail and buses interconnect, offering a single-transfer trip towards Brisbane.

20. 20

    Labrador, QLD

    Population 18,643 · Median income $1,188/wk · SEIFA 930

21. 21

    Coorparoo, QLD

    Population 18,132 · Median income $2,105/wk · SEIFA 1099

    Coorparoo is a leafy, established suburb in Brisbane's inner south-east, a little under six kilometres by road from the city centre, ringed by Camp Hill, Holland Park, Stones Corner and Norman Park. Settlers first knew the spot as Four Mile Camp, but in 1875 a public meeting settled on the present name, thought to come from an Aboriginal word for Norman Creek and said to refer either to mosquitoes or to the call of a dove. The suburb grew through the land booms of the 1880s, and quickened once the tram line reached Coorparoo Junction in 1915. Handsome inter-war homes in the Spanish Mission style line Cavendish Road, while Old Cleveland Road carries the bustle of shops and the Coorparoo Square precinct, with its cinema and eateries, opened in 2017.

22. 22

    Sunnybank Hills, QLD

    Population 18,085 · Median income $1,725/wk · SEIFA 999

    Sunnybank Hills is an outer southern suburb of Brisbane, about seventeen kilometres from the city centre. The area was originally part of a larger district known as Coopers Plains, and its name has an unusual origin: when the railway arrived in the eighteen-eighties, a station was named after a local farm called Sunny Brae, brae being the Scottish word for a bank or slope. The surrounding area became Sunnybank, and the neighbouring rises were officially defined as Sunnybank Hills in 1971. Today it is one of Brisbane's most multicultural suburbs, home to the largest Chinese-Australian community of any suburb in Queensland, and its streets are lined with restaurants serving Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai and Japanese food. The suburb is anchored by the Sunnybank Hills Shoppingtown.

23. 23

    Capalaba, QLD

    Population 18,002 · Median income $1,747/wk · SEIFA 979

    Capalaba is a busy commercial and residential suburb in the City of Redland, on Brisbane's south-eastern fringe, where Tingalpa Creek divides it from the City of Brisbane and forms a gateway to the coastal Redlands. Its name is believed to come from a Yugarabul word for the ringtail possum, a marsupial native to the area. European settlement began in the 1850s with farmers, sawmillers and timber-getters, and a town surveyed as Tingalpa in 1863 was renamed Capalaba in 1927 to end confusion with another district of the same name. Queensland's first drive-in cinema opened here in 1955. The completion of the Leslie Harrison Dam on Tingalpa Creek in 1968 secured the area's water supply and triggered rapid suburban growth through the 1970s. Today Capalaba centres on large shopping precincts and a busy bus station, with the Redlands IndigiScapes environmental centre and a centuries-old tallowwood tree among its attractions.

24. 24

    Calamvale, QLD

    Population 17,994 · Median income $1,874/wk · SEIFA 1024

25. 25

    Bracken Ridge, QLD

    Population 17,488 · Median income $1,972/wk · SEIFA 1002

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