The City of Whitehorse is located just 15 kilometres east of Melbourne and covers an area of 64 square kilometres.
With a population of approximately 155,000 residents, almost one third were born overseas.
The 2006 Census data shows that more than 110 different languages are spoken by residents of the city. The most common languages other than English are Cantonese, Mandarin, Greek, Italian, Vietnamese, Hindi, German, Sinhalese, Korean, Indonesian and Arabic.
The 2006 Census data also reveals that approximately 66 per cent of Whitehorse’s residents are aged between 18 and 69 years, 21 per cent are aged under 18 and 13 per cent are aged over 70 years.
Volunteering is an important part of the lives of many people living in Whitehorse. 20.5 per cent of residents volunteering to help the community in some capacity compared to the Melbourne average of 15.5 per cent.
Whitehorse City Council provides more than 100 high quality services and facilities across a range of areas, including community services, environmental services, customer services, health and wellbeing, planning and building, parks and gardens and more.
Council also has a broad base of infrastructure assets servicing the local community.
There are more than 700 kilometres of roads, 1,300 kilometres of footpaths and 824 kilometres of stormwater drainage network.
In addition there are 375 buildings and facilities, including early childhood and maternal care, leisure and recreation, community and cultural facilities, 52 sports fields, 174 playgrounds and an immense asset register of street trees as well as extensive bushland and parkland.
Features of the City
Whitehorse is characterised by quiet tree-lined residential streets (with some areas dating back to the 1940s), a wealth of parks, gardens and natural bushland reserves, a range of bustling shopping centres, many arts and cultural opportunities and sports and leisure facilities.
The Whitehorse community has access to an extensive public transport system with trains, trams and buses all widely servicing the area.
Whitehorse boasts some of the region’s leading educational, medical and leisure facilities and is home to the largest high technology precinct in eastern Melbourne, placing it at the cutting edge of the telecommunications, multimedia and information technology industry.
