Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live across every state and territory in Australia, but the population is concentrated most heavily in New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia. As of 2021, nearly 984,000 people identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, making up 3.8% of the total Australian population. A common misconception is that most Indigenous Australians live in remote outback communities, but the reality is quite different: about 4 in 5 live in cities, suburbs, or regional towns.
Population by State and Territory
New South Wales is home to the largest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of any state, with roughly 339,700 people, or about 34.5% of the entire Indigenous population. Queensland follows with 273,100 people (27.8%), and Western Australia comes third with 120,000 (12.2%). Together, these three states account for nearly three-quarters of all Indigenous Australians.
Victoria, despite being Australia’s second most populous state overall, has a relatively small Indigenous population of about 78,700 people, just 1.2% of the state’s total residents. South Australia has around 52,000, Tasmania about 33,900, and the Australian Capital Territory roughly 9,500.
The Northern Territory stands out as a unique case. While its Indigenous population of 76,500 is modest in raw numbers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 30.8% of the Territory’s total population. That’s by far the highest proportion of any state or territory, more than seven times the national average. In every other jurisdiction, Indigenous people represent less than 6.1% of the local population.
Cities, Towns, and Regional Areas
The single largest concentration of urban Indigenous Australians is in the Blacktown local government area in Western Sydney. Across the country, 40.8% of all First Nations people live in major cities, a share that has been growing steadily as younger generations move toward urban centers for education and employment. Another 24.8% live in inner regional areas (think larger country towns within a couple of hours of a capital city), and 19.0% live in outer regional areas.
That means roughly 85% of Indigenous Australians, about 832,800 people, live in non-remote areas where they access the same infrastructure, schools, and hospitals as the broader population. Their communities are woven into the suburbs of Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Darwin, and dozens of regional centers like Dubbo, Cairns, Townsville, and Broome.
Remote and Very Remote Communities
About 1 in 7 First Nations people (15.4%, or around 150,900 people) live in remote or very remote parts of the country. These communities are scattered across the Northern Territory, the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia, Far North Queensland, and parts of South Australia. In Western Australia alone, more than 12,000 people live in over 200 remote Aboriginal communities, with another 3,000 in 37 town-based communities. Most of these are in the Kimberley region, with others spread across the Pilbara, Goldfields, and Mid West-Gascoyne.
Remote communities vary enormously in size. Some are small homelands or outstations with a handful of families, while others are towns of several hundred or even a few thousand people. Living conditions in these areas are generally poorer than in more accessible parts of Australia, with limited access to jobs, training, health services, and housing. Many of these communities sit on land that has deep spiritual and cultural significance to the groups who live there, and residents often choose to stay because of that connection to Country.
Connection to Traditional Country
Before European colonization, Australia was home to an estimated 250 distinct languages and 600 to 700 dialects, each associated with a specific nation or language group. The AIATSIS Map of Indigenous Australia, one of the most widely referenced resources on this topic, shows the general locations of these larger groupings across the entire continent, from coastal rainforests to central deserts. Every part of Australia, urban or rural, falls within the traditional lands of one or more Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander groups.
“Country” is the term Aboriginal people commonly use to describe the lands, waterways, and seas to which they are connected. This relationship is not just historical. It shapes identity, ceremony, and law, and it persists whether a person lives on their traditional Country or in a city hundreds of kilometers away. Many Indigenous Australians who live in urban areas maintain strong ties to their Country through family, travel, and cultural practice.
Land Rights and the Indigenous Estate
A significant portion of Australia’s landmass is now formally recognized as Indigenous land. As of 2023, the total Indigenous estate covers approximately 536 million hectares, roughly 70% of Australia’s land area. This figure includes land held under a range of legal arrangements: native title determinations, Indigenous land use agreements, Aboriginal freehold, and other special rights. About 443 million hectares (58% of the continent) is subject to special rights for Indigenous peoples and communities. In Western Australia, the Aboriginal Lands Trust estate alone covers 23 million hectares, about 8.7% of the state.
Much of this recognized land is in arid or semi-arid regions of central and northern Australia, where population density is extremely low. The legal recognition matters enormously for cultural and economic reasons, but it does not change the fact that most Indigenous Australians live far from these areas, in the cities and towns along the eastern and western coasts.
Household Size and Living Arrangements
Indigenous households tend to be larger than the national average. The typical Indigenous household includes about 3.3 people, compared with 2.5 for other Australian households. Indigenous families are more likely to live in family households (81% versus 68%) and less likely to live alone (14% versus 23%). Multi-family households, where two or more family groups share a home, are also more common: 5% of Indigenous households compared with 1% for the rest of the population. In these multi-family arrangements, the average household size jumps to about 7 people.
These patterns reflect both cultural values around extended family and, in many cases, practical pressures like housing shortages, particularly in remote communities. Overcrowding remains a persistent issue in parts of northern and central Australia, where available housing stock has not kept pace with population growth.