St Lucia

St Lucia is a residential and university suburb in the City of Brisbane. It's home to the University of Queensland's St Lucia campus and 12,574 residents as of the 2016 census.

Name
St Lucia's name is indirectly derived from the island country of the same name in the Caribbean. Part of what is now St Lucia's European name was originally Lang Farm after Reverend John Lang. In 1882 William Wilson purchased Dart's Coldridge Plantation and renamed it The St Lucia Sugar Plantation after St Lucia where he'd been born. The next year in 1883 he subdivided part of the plantation and subsequently named it St Lucia Estate.

Establishment as a suburb
St Lucia was established as a suburb on August 11, 1975 by the Queensland Place Names Board. The suburb's boundary has since been altered once in 2009.

Demographics
In the 2016 census, St Lucia recorded a population of 12,574 people, 52% female and 48% male. The median age of the St Lucia population was 23 years, 15 years below the national median. 46.2% of people living in St Lucia were born in Australia. The other top responses for country of birth were China (9.9%), Malaysia (5.9%), Singapore (3.6%), England (2.6%) and Indonesia (2.5%).

St Lucia is a predominantly family suburb with 50.1% of households being family households. Of these family households, 49.1% have children. The other households are group households (28.3%) and single-person households (21.7%).

Employment and wealth
In 2016, St Lucia had an unemployment rate of 16.8%, 9.9% higher than the national rate. The top industries were higher education (14.6%), cafes and restaurants (4.9%), hospitals (except psychiatric hospitals) (3.4%), legal services (2.6%) and secondary education (2.4%).

The weekly median household income was $1,385 (annually $72,020) and the weekly median personal income was $323 (annually $16,796).