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Australia: Cities

Adelaide

Adelaide is the capital of South Australia, named after Queen Adelaide, the consort of King William IV. It’s situated on the Fleurieu Peninsula, overlooking Gulf St. Vincent, with the low lying Mount Lofty Ranges sitting to the east. Adelaide is the main interim point of the Indian Pacific railway between Sydney and Perth, and the terminus of the Overland to Melbourne and The Ghan via Alice Springs to Darwin. Its population is 1.2 million, the fifth-largest of Australia’s capital cities, and its inhabitants are known as Adelaideans.

Adelaide is a beautiful city but it has lagged behind Australia’s other cities over the last 20 years or so. Some people regard this as an advantage because it means that the city is less frenetic than most of Australia’s other main centres. Others see it as negative and view Adelaide as a dull place, with few of the cultural and social attractions and little of the vibrancy of Australia’s other cities, which is unfair. Adelaide has long had a reputation as a religious city – it’s called the City of Churches – but this is more a reflection of the past than the present and it’s rumoured that for every church built in the city a pub was also built to see to the needs of the less holy. Adelaide in the 21st century has rather more nightlife than previously and enjoys its fair share of bars, cafés and restaurants. It’s also beautifully situated, with many parks and a backdrop of hills, as well as attractive beaches, galleries, historic houses and museums. In a 2005 survey of the world’s best cities in which to live, carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Adelaide was ranked joint fifth with Perth and Sydney.

One of Adelaide’s major attractions for potential immigrants is its inexpensive property. This is a particular draw for people working in vocational (and modestly paid) professions such as nursing and teaching, who can enjoy a higher standard of living in Adelaide than in Melbourne or Sydney. Adelaide’s climate is also reputed to be one of the best of Australia’s cities. The city is on the same latitude as Sydney, but its weather is quite different, more classically Mediterranean, with cooler, wetter winters, and hotter, drier summers – ‘proper’ weather.

Adelaide (and the rest of South Australia) was hamstrung financially following the 1992 collapse of the State Bank, which led to a debt of around $4 billion. This has recently been reduced, making the economic outlook for the next decade better than for the last. The major components of Adelaide’s economy are the defence, manufacturing and research industries. The city has General Motors Holden and Mitsubishi car manufacturing plants and the main government research institution, DSTO (the Defence Science and Technology Organisation). Other industries include electronic component production and ore refining.

Adelaide hosts a number of annual events (as well as being called the Wine State, Australia’s best-known wine region – the Barossa Valley – is located just outside the city, South Australia is known as the Festival State) including the Adelaide Festival of Arts, the Adelaide Film Festival, the Barossa Music Festival and the Fringe Festival. It’s also a respected seat of learning, with Flinders University, the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia all noted research and teaching institutions.

Alice Springs

Alice Springs lies at almost the exact centre of Australia, around 1,500km (935mi) from the nearest major cities, Adelaide and Darwin. Often called simply ‘Alice’, it’s the second-largest settlement in the Northern Territory, with a population of around 30,000. Alice is best-known for two things: its proximity to Uluru (Ayers Rock), one of Australia’s best-known landmarks, and as the setting for Nevil Shute’s novel A Town Like Alice.

Alice was established as a frontier settlement for the north-to-south camel trains that trekked across Australia’s desert interior, and today it’s the mid-point of the Adelaide to Darwin railway. During the ’60s, Alice became an important defence centre with the establishment of the joint Australian/USA Pine Gap satellite monitoring base, 19km (12mi) south-west of Alice. The base gives the city an American air (with a population of around 2,000 Americans).

By far the major industry is tourism, which developed because of Alice’s proximity to Uluru, 400km (250mi) to the west. But with the creation in the ’80s of Yulara resort and airport near Uluru, some tourists no longer visit Alice, heading straight for Yulara. However, it has plenty of other attractions including an arts centre, ballooning, camel tours, a casino, the Desert Park wildlife centre, a museum, plenty of nightlife and a number of tourist resorts. To serve its 500,000 visitors per year, Alice has plenty of backpacker lodges, caravan parks and hotels.

The economy of Alice is booming and it’s one of Australia’s wealthiest cities, its major sources of income including tourism, Pine Gap and high government funding directed towards the local Aboriginal population (Aborigines make up 17 per cent of Alice’s population and 29 per cent of the Northern Territory’s).

Alice’s climate is extreme with summer temperatures often reaching 40 to 42°C (and sometimes 48°C) and winter lows dropping to -7°C. There are also the large diurnal ranges (differences in temperature within a period of 24 hours) typical of deserts, with hot days and cold nights. There’s often little or no rain in Alice Springs, but the amount received can vary greatly from year to year.

Brisbane

Brisbane (pronounced BRIZ-buhn, with locals called Brisbanites) lies in the south-east corner of Queensland, an hour’s drive north of the Gold Coast. The city straddles the Brisbane River and its eastern suburbs look out over Moreton Bay. The greater Brisbane region sits on the coastal plain east of the Great Dividing Range, although parts of the city are very hilly.

Brisbane has a population of around 975,000, and 1.85 million people live in the greater metropolitan area. It has a lower population density than most Australian cities because much of the housing is detached homes on large plots of land, often with lush gardens.

Pre-1950 houses are often built in the Queenslander architectural style, with large verandahs and built on stilts to maximise the circulation of cool air in this nearly tropical city (it’s situated just a few degrees south of the Tropic of Capricorn). An important consideration for those thinking of buying property in Brisbane is the discovery in 2001 of an infestation of fire ants in some suburbs. The state government is trying to eradicate the insects, but property in affected areas can prove difficult to sell.

Brisbane used to be regarded as a backwater, but is currently one of Australia’s major growth cities. It attracts a lot of migrants, both from within Australia and internationally, many drawn by its balmy, dry winter climate, when temperatures rarely drop below 21°C (70°F). On the downside, summers and autumns can be humid, rainy and stifling, with conditions particularly steamy between November and April. Summer thunderstorms are common and Brisbane is also prey to cyclonic winds and hailstorms. However, despite the usually humid summers with violent rainstorms, recent years have seen sometimes severe summer droughts.

Brisbane used to be seen as a ‘branch office’ city, as many major financial institutions and businesses have their headquarters in Sydney or Melbourne. To compensate for this, the Queensland state government has been developing science and technology industries throughout the state (particularly in Brisbane) as part of its ‘Smart State’ campaign. Brisbane has a diverse economy, with a wide range of blue and white collar industries. The former include metalworking, paper milling, petroleum refining and stevedoring, while the latter encompass financial services, higher education, information technology and public sector administration. Tourism is also important.

As well as its wide range of employment opportunities, Brisbane offers competitively-priced property (it has the lowest cost of living of any Australian city) and an attractive street café scene, but its most obvious drawback is its rather shabby city centre, which is well below the standard of Australia’s other major cities. Some people also consider parts of Brisbane to be tacky, particularly some of the tourist arcades, but the city also boasts some elegant architecture and impressive galleries, museums and parks.

In a 2005 survey of the world’s best cities in which to live, carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Brisbane was ranked joint eleventh.

Cairns

Cairns is in the far north of Queensland, 1,700km (1,060mi) from Brisbane. It was originally established as a port to export gold and other precious metals from the mines west of the city. Situated in the tropical north, Cairns used to be viewed as a frontier country backwater, but in the 21st century the city is booming thanks to tourism, the population has swelled to 125,000 and it has developed a more sophisticated image.

Cairns is successfully selling itself as a year-round tourist destination and is Australia’s third most popular tourist venue, after Sydney and Brisbane. It’s greatly assisted by having a wealth of natural wonders on its doorstep, including the Great Barrier Reef (an hour and a half away by boat), and Cape Tribulation and the Daintree National Park (both areas of tropical rainforest). Cairns is also the jump-off point for those visiting the Atherton Tablelands, Cape York Peninsula and Cooktown.

As part of the drive to modernise Cairns, the foreshore was redeveloped in 2003, with lagoons and the Pier Marketplace giving the city a more upmarket feel. The warm, tropical climate, with monsoon rains between November and March, is said to be similar to Hawaii, mention of which also adds to the city’s desired upmarket image. The climate, however, has its downside: cyclones sometimes arrive during the wet season and flooding of the Barron and Mulgrave Rivers can cut the city off from all road traffic.

Cairns’s economy relies heavily on tourism, which contributes around 40 per cent of the city’s income. Agriculture is also important and sugar is by far the largest crop. Fruit and tobacco are grown in the cooler, higher areas of the Atherton Tablelands west of Cairns, while fishing, manufacturing and mining also contribute to the economy.

More pages

Page 1: Adelaide
Page 2: Canberra
Page 3: Hobart
Page 4: Perth

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