Australian Capital Territory

Canberra is Australia's largest inland city, with a population around 381,000 spread across roughly 806km². Known as the "bush capital," it was designed from 1913 by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin as a planned garden city around Lake Burley Griffin, rather than growing organically the way most Australian cities did.

The territory's economy has historically been dominated by government administration and defence, which have together made up more than 40% of the workforce at times -- a genuinely different employment base to any state capital, and one reason Canberra has consistently had the lowest unemployment and highest average disposable income of any Australian capital city.

Unlike every state in this list, the ACT has no other towns of note -- it's effectively one city plus the surrounding bushland and rural land, so there's no "which regional centre" decision to make the way there is in NSW or Queensland.

Rental bonds are handled by the ACT Revenue Office via Access Canberra's Office of Rental Bonds -- the Territory itself holds the bond (not your landlord or agent), capped at 4 weeks' rent, with lodgement and refunds through the Rental Bonds Portal.