Townsville Lifestyle

Townsville’s community is safe and welcoming and offers you a place to study in a friendly and inclusive environment. With thousands of international students from all across the world choosing to make Townsville their second home you will find a diverse range of cultural connections within a supportive community.

Providing a laid back tropical lifestyle, Townsville is the largest city in North Queensland with a population of 190,000. Known for year-round sunshine and clear blue skies, you can enjoy an outdoor lifestyle, keeping active and exploring nearby nature attractions. Close to the Great Barrier Reef and Tropical Rainforest there is no escaping the beauty of living by these two World Heritage sites.

Townsville is home to a variety of world class education facilities, leading edge health care, affordable housing, convenient retailing, spectacular events and entertainment, dining precincts and a wide range of outdoor recreation options. 

Events include Music festivals, Supercar racing, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music and the Magnetic Island Race Week, through to World Championship Bull Riding, the Townsville Cup horse racing carnival as well as cultural events such as Cultural Festivals and Northern Australia Festival of Arts.

Townsville is home to three national sporting teams – the North Queensland Cowboys rugby league teams both Men’s and Women’s team (NRL and WNRL) and the JCU Townsville Fire women’s basketball team (WNBL).

Townsville is unpolluted, picturesque and above all – A great place to live!

For a first hand student experience about their lifestyle an education journey in Townsville read our Student Stories

Resources on living in, and relocating to Townsville:

Townsville City Council – Living in Townsville Information

Experience Townsville North Queensland

Townsville Multicultural Support Group

Townsville Multicultural Support Group Inc. (TMSG) is a not-for-profit organisation that is subcontracted by Multicultural Australia Ltd to welcome people who arrive through the Australian Government Humanitarian Program and people who arrive as migrants to Townsville and surrounds. People who arrive as refugees and migrants are keen to embrace and contribute to Australia, and bring hope, skills, ambition, and resilience. Our teams support them in three key ways:

  • The Welcome team ensures a friendly, culturally appropriate welcome and ensures smooth management of finance and administration.
  • The Settlement team supports refugees and migrants in their initial settlement, with access to major community services and access to education, employment, recreational support through information and referral for the first five years of being in Australia.
  • The Community Engagement team delivers programs in partnership with other community services designed to facilitate mutual engagement and education between newly emerging communities as they settle.

TMSG has a diverse and experienced team who offer practical support to people of all backgrounds, with over 80 percent of our staff members coming from a migrant or refugee background themselves. As a result the team has a great range of skills and knowledge to share, along with speaking many different languages including Arabic, Bemba, Burmese, French, Korean, Kinyamulenge, Kinyarwandan, Kirundi, Lingala, Mandarin, Nepali, Portuguese, Sango, Somali, Swahili, Tagalog, Vietnamese and more!

For more information about our organisation or support we can provide, please contact our office on 4775 1588 or email [email protected]