When you are moving your life across the world, it can feel really difficult to choose an Australian city to call your home. There are so many popular cities in Australia, and working out the best places to live in Australia is a really subjective subject.  

I’ve recently received so many messages from people asking me about where to live in Australia. These questions are from all sorts of angles: ‘What is the best place to live in Australia?’ ‘What is the cheapest place to live in Australia?’ ‘What is the safest city in Australia?’ ‘What is the best place for work in Australia?’ ‘What are the best places to live in Australia for families?’ and the list goes on and on. When it comes to identifying the best place to live in Australia, the truth is that everybody’s situation, wants and needs are totally different! 

Sometimes the decision over the best place to live in Australia is decided for you if you’ve secured a job in advance, or you’ve been granted a visa that restricts you to a specific state or territory. But if you’ve got a visa that allows you to choose where to live in Australia and you’ve been considering the popular Australian cities and wondering where should I live in Australia, this post is for you!

Want some help choosing the best place to live in Australia to achieve the dream lifestyle you’re searching for? Check out my Where to Move in Australia mini-course and workbook. Let me walk you through the decision-making process so you can get clear about the lifestyle you want so you can choose the best location for your new home in Australia! You can get instant access here. 

Choosing the best city of Australia 

Moving to Australia is a big deal. You’re packing up your life and shipping it across the world. It’s an expensive process, and it’s no wonder you want to choose the best city in Australia to call home!

The most important part of choosing the best place in Australia to live is to find YOUR best city to live in Australia. YOUR best place, won’t necessarily be someone else’s best place!

How do you go about reviewing the best cities in Australia and figuring out the perfect place to live in Aus? It’s not as complicated as you might think! 

You first need to adjust your thinking. To choose the best city to live in Australia, you need to get super clear on what it is you want from your new life in Australia. Stop trying to think about which is the most popular city in Australia or wondering about the cheapest places to live in Australia. Stop focusing on the WHERE for now, and instead focus on the WHAT and WHY. After all, what really matters is that the city you choose delivers the lifestyle you’re looking for. 

So, to recap, focus on what you want from your new Australian lifestyle. Get really crystal clear on that and then you find a location in Australia that offers as much of that as possible. Easy!

Here are a few things you’re going to want to consider when choosing the best places to live in Australia for your needs: 

Weather: What sort of weather suits you? Are you looking for somewhere that has hot summers and cold winters? Does humidity bother you? Do you mind the threat of extreme storms? Do you want to be close enough to the snow to go skiiing in winter regularly? Are you looking for a place that is hot for most of the year?

Work opportunities: Work is a key part of the relocation puzzle, so it’s important to do research about work options for your occupation in Australia. Some occupations are better suited to certain Australian cities. While it’s interesting to think about the cost of living in Australia and considering cheap places to live in Australia, work plays such an important factor in choosing where to move in Australia. Is your occupation needed in all cities, or is it more specialised? What are the salaries like? I know lots of people want to avoid more expensive cities like Melbourne and Sydney, but you might find your salary there would be significantly higher and that there are more opportunities there. Now is the time to get clear about the work you’re looking for so you can begin researching the locations that match your requirements. 

Population size: It’s worth considering Australian cities by population if size is important to you. Are you looking for a smaller city that might offer a slower pace of life or will you only be happy with a large Australian city? There is a huge difference between Melbourne and Brisbane for the sort of city lifestyle they offer. What sort of city or town will make you happy? 

Lifestyle opportunities: What are you hoping to do more of in Australia? (If you haven’t already written down your ‘why’ about moving, now is a great time to think about it. I have a post all about that here). Do you want theme parks, beaches, fishing, camping…do you want to own a boat or jetski? Or a horse? How do you want your new Australian lifestyle to look? Nailing this down can really help you narrow down the best cities in Australia that offer those things. 

Safety: We all want to live in the safest place in Australia but the thing to remember is all cities in Australia have good areas and bad areas so there isn’t only one safe place. As you begin exploring Australia neighbourhoods and suburbs, there is so much to consider from a safety point of view. There are some stunning suburbs around us that are very affluent and while they are ‘safe’, they also can have a higher rate of burglaries and car thefts because they are targeted for having nice things, so crime reports don’t always reflect ‘bad’ areas. I think the best way to find a safe place to live is to consider a holistic approach – speak to people in community groups, read local online news publications, check out crime stats and most importantly, spend time in these places when you arrive. You quickly get a good feel for an area. Just know that whichever city in Australia you choose, you’ll be able to find a safe place to live there so this is something that will inform the suburb you choose later rather than the city itself. 

Opportunities: What opportunities are you looking for in your new home in Australia? Do you want it to be an up and coming city for your kids so they have career opportunities in the future? Do you want to choose a city that is expanding and developing for opportunities with real estate? How do you want your future to look?

You might also like to think about schools, entertainment opportunities, travel opportunities, transport links and more. Spend some time really getting clear about your wants and needs from your new home Down Under. 

Get super clear by writing a list of everything you are looking for. It becomes so much easier to choose the best place to live in Australia when you know what it is that you want. 

Research the best places in Australia online

When you know exactly what will make the best place to live in Australia, you’ve nailed the hard part! Next, it’s time to consider the top cities in Australia and see which of them offer as much of that lifestyle as possible. You may need to compromise on some of your (less important) wants, as sometimes it’s not possible to have absolutely everything but the important thing is to figure out your non-negotiables.

All of the cities have their own tourism websites – spend time on them considering the lifestyle available. Homely is a fantastic site for doing online research into Australian neighbourhoods as it allows you to search popular Australian suburbs.

It’s also useful to ask around in Facebook groups (either migration groups or city groups) to get people’s advice about the best place to live in Australia for your circumstances. Just remember to be specific with your questions! So often, I see people ask in Facebook groups: ‘What is the best place to live in Australia?’ but it really is an impossible question to answer without the clarity of what it is that you’re looking for. 

A much better way to post the question is this: ‘What is the best place to live in Australia for a family with three kids under ten. We love sport, camping and going to the beach. We hate cold weather and are happy when it’s hot and sunny. I work as a nurse and my husband is in finance. We would like a large house with pool in the suburbs about an hour from a city. We’d like playgrounds, cafes and shops nearby and would love to have lots of things to do on weekends. We’d prefer a smaller city with a laid back atmosphere.’ 

Getting clear on your wants and needs really will help you narrow down your choices, and it also helps when asking for advice in groups! 

Choose the best place to live in Australia

When I was trying to decide where to move in Australia, I let myself get in a confused mess. I just kept thinking about all of the places to live in Australia and what they offered. I got caught up in thinking about the most popular Australian cities and, for a while, I forgot what it was that we wanted from our move as I was so focused on all of the places and what they could offer.

We place so much pressure on ourselves to choose the best Australian city to live in, and it can feel really overwhelming to make the right choice (especially if we haven’t visited all of the places we’re considering!) The best way to figure it out is to step back from it all a little and get focused on what you want, then your options become so much clearer. 

I hope you find this post useful and it helps give you some ideas about working out the best place to live in Australia! This is one exciting adventure that you’re on and there are no right or wrong answers here – only different directions. The best part is you get to consciously create this new life from the ground up! 

Want some extra support in choosing the best place to live in Australia? Check out my Where to Move in Australia mini-course and workbook. I’ll walk you through the decision-making process step-by-step so you can get clear about the lifestyle you want and choose the best location for your new home in Australia! You can get started right now. 

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