Twelve Australian Regional Cities from Broome to Rockhampton

Broome began as a pearling town in the 1880s and is the largest town in the Kimberley, with 14,660 residents at the 2021 census. It is also home to the Sun Picture Garden, described as the oldest operating open air cinema in the world.

Geraldton was established in 1850 and named after Governor Charles Fitzgerald. Its port serves the mining, fishing, wheat and sheep industries of the Mid West, and Point Moore Lighthouse is the oldest surviving Commonwealth lighthouse in Western Australia.

Bunbury, about 175 kilometres south of Perth, was founded in 1836 and is the third most populous city in Western Australia. It was linked to Perth by the South Western Railway from 1893 and is home to Australia's only silicon manufacturing company.

Albany was founded on 26 December 1826 as a military outpost and is the oldest colonial settlement in Western Australia, older than Perth and Fremantle. It served as the colony's main deep-water port until Fremantle's inner harbour opened in 1897, and it carries the Noongar name Kinjarling.

Kalgoorlie was established in 1893 after Patrick Hannan found gold there in June. Mining still dominates, centred on the Super Pit, and the town is the terminus of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, which pipes water from Mundaring Weir near Perth.

Mount Gambier is built on the slopes of a dormant volcano, about 450 kilometres southeast of Adelaide and 17 kilometres from the Victorian border. It reached city status in 1954 and is known for the Blue Lake, a crater lake that changes colour with the seasons.

Mildura sits on the Victorian bank of the Murray River and began as an irrigation colony in 1887. It is the largest settlement in the Sunraysia region, where around 90 percent of Australia's table grape exports are grown.

Wagga Wagga lies on the Murrumbidgee River in the Riverina, roughly midway between Sydney and Melbourne. It was surveyed in 1849, became a municipality in 1870 and was proclaimed a city in 1946, and it is the ninth largest inland city in Australia.

Dubbo is the largest population centre in the Orana Region of New South Wales and became a city in 1966. It sits where the Newell, Mitchell and Golden highways meet, which makes it a road and rail freight hub linking Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Newcastle and Adelaide.

Coffs Harbour is a coastal city about 529 kilometres north of Sydney and 390 kilometres south of Brisbane, on the traditional lands of the Gumbaynggirr people. Timber and agriculture, including the area once called the Bananacoast, gave way increasingly to tourism.

Toowoomba, 132 kilometres west of Brisbane, had an urban population of 142,163 at the 2021 census. That makes it the second most populous inland city in Australia after Canberra and the second largest regional centre in Queensland.

Rockhampton stands on the Fitzroy River just north of the Tropic of Capricorn and was proclaimed in 1858. It grew on gold discoveries at Canoona and Mount Morgan and is known today as the Beef Capital of Australia.