Twelve Australian Regional Cities in Order of Recorded Founding Year, from Bathurst to Bundaberg

Bathurst, about 200 kilometers west-northwest of Sydney, was established in 1815 as the oldest inland settlement in Australia. Australia's first payable gold discovery nearby in 1851 sparked the nation's first gold rush, and the city is known today for the Mount Panorama circuit, home of the Bathurst 1000 race.

Port Macquarie, at the mouth of the Hastings River about 390 kilometers north of Sydney, was founded in 1821 as a penal settlement, replacing Newcastle as the destination for convicts who had committed secondary crimes in New South Wales. It is the eastern terminus of the Oxley Highway, and locals call it Port Mac.

Burnie, on the north-west coast of Tasmania, was founded in 1827 as Emu Bay and renamed in the early 1840s after William Burnie, a director of the Van Diemen's Land Company. Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed it a city on 26 April 1988, and it is the fourth largest city on the island.

Busselton, about 220 kilometers southwest of Perth, is known as Undalup in the Noongar language and grew from a historic port town. After the port closed in 1972, tourism became its main source of investment, and it is best known for the Busselton Jetty, the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere at 1,841 metres.

Albury sits on the Hume Highway at the New South Wales and Victoria border and forms a twin-city pair with Wodonga across the Murray River. It grew as a transport and commercial hub after the 1851 border separation, and was officially proclaimed a city in 1946.

Orange, on the western edge of the Central Tablelands about 254 kilometers west of Sydney, stands at an elevation of 862 meters on the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri Nation. It is the birthplace of the poets Banjo Paterson and Kenneth Slessor and hosted the first Australian Touring Car Championship in 1960.

Tamworth, on the Peel River roughly midway between Sydney and Brisbane, became in 1888 the first place in Australia to use electric street lights, which earned it the nickname the First Town of Lights. It is also known as the Country Music Capital of Australia and as the National Equine Capital of Australia.

Warrnambool, about 265 kilometers southwest of Melbourne, lies at the western end of the Great Ocean Road. It takes its name from Mount Warrnambool, a volcanic cone about 25 kilometers northeast of the city that also named an Aboriginal clan; the traditional custodians are the Dhauwurd Wurrung, also known as the Gunditjmara.

Shepparton began as a sheep station and river crossing on the Goulburn River floodplain in northern Victoria before becoming a railway town. It is now the hub of the Goulburn Valley irrigation system, one of the largest irrigation systems in Australia, and the seat of the City of Greater Shepparton.

Gladstone was established in 1863 between the Calliope and Boyne Rivers, about 517 kilometers northwest of Brisbane. It is home to the Port of Gladstone, Queensland's largest multi-commodity shipping port, and is the largest town in the Gladstone Region.

Hervey Bay shares its 1863 start with Gladstone: the settlement of Pialba developed there from that year, on traditional Butchulla land. James Cook named the bay in 1770 for Augustus Hervey, and in 2019 the city became the first Whale Heritage Site in the world according to the World Cetacean Alliance.

Bundaberg, on the southern bank of the Burnett River about 20 kilometres from its mouth, ends the path with a recorded founding year of 1870. It is the ninth largest city in Queensland, sits on a rich coastal agricultural plain, and is known for its sugar industry.