When it comes to quality of life Australia does very well. The weather, the fact there is so much space and fantastic sports facilities mean that it is also an extremely healthy place. It almost does not matter where you live, you have easy access to gyms, sports, and leisure facilities. As well as fantastic fresh, tasty, and healthy food. But some places do have a bit of an edge over others.

Something that the Mandoe Media team uncovered when they decided to look at Australia´s cities and work out which ones were the healthiest to live in. They took data from several reliable sources, crunched the numbers, and came up with some really interesting results. You can read the full study here.

Below we have pulled together the headlines for you to give you a taste of what they found out.

What the study covered

But before we do that first let us explain what metrics were looked at

- Gym availability
- How interested residents are in going to the gym
- Whether the city has plenty of healthy restaurants
- The quality of the food that their healthy restaurants serve
- How easy it is to take part in outdoor activities

Initially, Mandoe Media started by looking at the twenty biggest cities in the country. But, they found that for 4 of them, there was not enough data for some or all of the metrics. As a result, they only completed the analysis for sixteen of Australia´s biggest cities.

They used data from TripAdvisor to determine the availability of healthy restaurants and outdoor activities. To work out gym availability they turned to Yelp and Yellow Pages. When it comes to restaurant quality, they used Google reviews.

For gym interest, Google´s Keyword Planner was utilised to see how many residents were searching for gym-related terms online.

Cairns tops the list for the availability of outside activities

When it comes to the outdoor activities metric, it was Australia´s smaller cities that impressed. Their slightly more remote locations tend to mean that there is more nature for residents to get out and enjoy.

Take the winner of this section as an example – Cairns.

Peta Zietsch who is the Director of Sales at Cairns Adventure Group said:

"Cairns is totally spoilt when it comes to outdoor activities. We've got the Great Barrier Reef on our doorstep, spectacular rainforest, and hiking trails in every direction."

Gold Coast and Adelaide rank joint first

Surprisingly, it was not Australia´s most populated cities that had the best facilities when it comes to health and well-being. It was Gold Coast and Adelaide that ranked first.

Gold Coast did particularly well for gym interest (1st) and healthy restaurant availability. While for Adelaide it was gym interest (2nd) and ranking in the top 5 for 4 out of the 5 metrics that secured them the top spot.

Melbourne and Perth rank joint third

Melbourne secured the first spot for healthy restaurant quality and second for how many were available in the city. Cancelling out the fact that it only hit the 10th position for the gym interest metric.

Perth secured its joint third place because it ranked second for gym availability. As well as 4th for healthy restaurant quality and gym interest.

Sydney ranks fifth overall

Sydney had particularly poor results for gym interest and the availability of outdoor activities. Both of which cancelled out its relatively good gym and restaurant availability results.

Brisbane surprises too

Brisbane only ranked 6th overall, but surprisingly when it came to gym availability it took the number one spot. Yet despite this when Mandoe Media looked at Google Keyword planner results they discovered that people there do not carry out many gym-related searches. As a result, for gym interest, the city only ranked 9th.

How to find out more

The top five were as follows:

- Adelaide
- Gold Coast
- Melbourne
- Perth
- Sydney

If you want to know more about why they were ranked in that order just visit the Mandoe Media website and read the study in full.