It can be tricky finding the right place to live, especially if you have children as there are so many things to consider. The team here at Victory looked at a number of factors including house prices, child-friendly activities, restaurants, schools, and crime rates in 37 locations to discover the most and least family-friendly locations in Australia.
Each factor in every location was rated in order and assigned a score from 1-38, 1 being the best and 38 the worst. The locations with the fewest points in total are more family-friendly and those with the most points are less family-friendly.
The most family-friendly location is the Sunshine Coast, which has the smallest overall score of 41 points. The Sunshine Coast has around 160 child-friendly things to do, many schools, and a fairly low crime index of 23.59. This was followed by Brisbane and Sydney on 45 and 46 points respectively. As expected Sydney has the highest number of child-friendly restaurants (1217) and things to do (240) but also had a higher crime index (33.44).
With the exception of Perth, all of the top ten family-friendly locations are towards the east or southeast of Australia and all have a score of 70 or below.
Bunbury is the least family-friendly location, scoring 137 points in total. The research found that Bunbury has very few child-friendly restaurants or things to do and a higher than average crime index of 66.18, more than double that of the Sunshine Coast. Bunbury was followed by Sunbury and Tweed Heads as the next least family-friendly locations.
Here is the full list of locations and their scores.
