Wollongong - the happiest city in Australia

It is official. We have proof positive that we live in the happiest city in Australia. Certainly the people of Wollongong and its many visitors are certainly happily handy and prolific with their cameras.

Jetpac, a San Francisco-based smartphone app, creates a multitude of travel guides. They use publicly-uploaded Instagram photos to measure the smiles on the faces of people on 100 million images publicly shared Instagram photos from the different cities within Australia. Wollongong has been ranked as the happiest part of the country, in a mammoth image processing study.

Image Source: Jetpac


The happiest places in the Illawarra, based on smiles, include Hotel Illawarra, The Little Prince, Wollongong train station and Flagstaff Hill, with the latter being more popular for men. The most photographed restaurants are Amigos, the Harbour Front and Roppongi. Chef's Choice and Marco's restaurants also get a mention as being more popular with women. Nightlife spot, His Boy Elroy, gets a mention too.

The train station ranking high surprises me. I guess we are a people who are just happy to greet our visitors or to take the 90 minute long but easy commute to Sydney whether it be for work or pleasure of a day or night on the town.

In a follow up post, I will list some of the marvellous places in and around Wollongong that make us smile. I will also check out my kids (young adult’s fave places too) to give you a comprehensive guide of where to eat and visit during your time here in the happiest city in Australia!

The 15 Happiest Cities in Australia

as ranked by Jetpac’s Smile Score:
  1. Wollongong (43.4)
  2. Townsville (40.1)
  3. Canberra (35.0)
  4. Newcastle (34.9)
  5. Darwin (34.8)
  6. Cairns (31.2)
  7. Adelaide (28.7)
  8. Gold Coast (28.4)
  9. Byron Bay (27.3)
  10. Brisbane (27.2)
  11. Perth (25.6)
  12. Fremantle (25.0)
  13. Sydney (24.9)
  14. Melbourne (22.6)
  15. Hobart (19.8)
Image Source: Jetpac

People in Hobart aren’t taking as many smiling photos as much as in the rest of Australia, but I reckon it is just because they’re just don’t have the population to compete with. The people in Tassie have much to smile about their capital city too. Just pay them a visit for proof positive and take some happy photos there while you’re at it and post them on Instagram to prove it to the world.

Now that you know, you had just better come to our fair city as soon as you can and see just what is it that makes us so happy to take so many happy snaps of our fair city and the good times we spend here. We all want to be happy don’t we?

Those of us that live here we’ll just keep on smiling as we take many happy snaps of our life in this fair city

Information on this post has been collated from the following sources
The Illawarra Mercury
Jetpac