Driver
NT · 2 schools · 2 childcare services
2,989 residents - 22.5% are children under 15, median age 33.
Family-Fit score
Our method is published belowLimited family services - strongest on families already here, weakest on childcare & early years.
- Schools in the area · 20% of the score
- 30/100
- Childcare & early years · 15% of the score
- 20/100
- Everyday amenities · 15% of the score
- 44/100
- Housing affordability · 15% of the score
- 65/100
- Families already here · 10% of the score
- 78/100
- Socio-economic profile · 10% of the score
- 33/100
NT median 50/100
2 schools in this SA2 · average government-school ICSEA 899
NT median 30/100
2 NQS-rated services nearby
NT median 46/100
7 parks · 0 GPs · 0 supermarkets · 3 playgrounds
NT median 74/100
Paying over 30% of income on housing: 10.0% of mortgage-holding households, 24.7% of renting households
NT median 80/100
22.5% of residents are children aged 0–14 · 41.8% of families are couples with children
NT median 44/100
SEIFA IRSAD decile 4 of 10 nationally
The grey marker on each bar is the median across the 58 Northern Territory areas we publish a score for (state median overall: 53/100). It is context, not a pass mark.
Not scored here (no published data for this area, so it is left out rather than counted as zero): Getting around. The remaining inputs were rescaled to 100.
How this score is calculated
Every input is a free, already-published government figure for the Driver SA2, mapped onto 0–100 by the fixed thresholds written below, then weighted. Inputs with no published data for this area are dropped and the rest rescaled - never scored as zero. We publish this method in full; the point of the score is that you can check it.
Read the bars, not just the number. Two inputs - school intake profile and SEIFA - both partly reflect how wealthy an area is, so they tend to move together. That is a real limitation of the score, which is why the breakdown is shown next to it.
What is deliberately not in it. School results (NAPLAN or VCE), crime, and flood or bushfire overlays are not graded into this score. Those appear elsewhere on this page as the official figures themselves, described in words - never reduced to a grade.
Sources: ACARA school register, ACECQA National Quality Standard register, OpenStreetMap, state GTFS timetables, ABS Census 2021, ABS SEIFA 2021 and the ABS housing affordability indicators. Where each dataset comes from →
Boundaries: ABS Suburbs & Localities 2021. School pins are ACARA's published locations. Map © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO. Open the full NT map →
This profile uses the ABS Driver statistical area (SA2) - the level Australian government data is published at. SA2 boundaries don’t always match suburb boundaries. It covers the gazetted suburb of Driver, drawn separately on the map above.
Driver is a locality in the Palmerston area of Northern Territory. This profile draws on ABS population and Census figures, the ACARA school register and ACECQA childcare ratings for the Driver SA2.
Living in Driver
A smaller suburb particularly popular with young families. 2 NQS-rated childcare services nearby. Mostly detached family homes.
What families notice
- 7 parks mapped inside this SA2 (OpenStreetMap).
- We don't have official school-zoning data for NT yet (only VIC and NSW) - confirm zoning directly with the school or department.
- We don't yet have official crime data for NT (only NSW and VIC) - that's a data gap on our side, not a claim this area is safe.
- We don't yet have property or rent figures for this area - check a real-estate portal directly for current prices.
Schools, childcare & safety
Live data for the Driver SA2 - ACARA schools register, ACECQA childcare ratings.
Government schools in Driver
Free government schools your child may attend. Exact school zones aren’t mapped for NT yet, so we can’t confirm which one is yours.
A picture of students’ family backgrounds (ICSEA) - not a ranking or a quality score.
We show school intake context and catchments, not exam results. We don’t publish a school ranking.
Schools in Driver
- Secondary · Government · Years 7-12Enrolment1,267ICSEA884
- Primary · Government · Years T-6Enrolment409ICSEA914
ICSEA reflects student intake context, not teaching quality (1000 = national average). All NT schools →
Childcare & early learning
- Exceeding NQSDriver PreschoolCentre-Based Care · 66 places · DriverRated May 2026
- Working Towards NQSYMCA of the Northern Territory Driver OSHCCentre-Based Care · 105 places · DriverRated Nov 2025
- Centre-based day care
- $13.06/hr
- Outside school hours care
- $9.70/hr
Mean hourly fee across CCS-approved services, December quarter 2025 - Dept of Education. Published at SA3 level (a wider area than this suburb's SA2), so it's an average across Palmerston and surrounds, not this specific service list.
NQS = National Quality Standard, the government benchmark ACECQA rates every service against - from "Working Towards" (below benchmark) up through "Meeting", "Exceeding" and "Excellent". Services matched by suburb name on the ACECQA register - verify locations before visiting. Ratings are reassessed periodically, not on a fixed schedule - a rating over 3 years old is flagged so you know to check for anything more recent.
Safety - recorded incidents
Official recorded-incident data is only published on this site for NSW and VIC so far - that's a coverage gap on our side, not a claim that Driver is safe. More on safety →
Ages of people here
15.1% of people here are school-age children (5–14) - more than the Northern Territory average of 14%, and 7.4% are under 5. The median age is 33.
- 0–4 years · before school
- 7.4%
- 5–14 years · school age
- 15.1%
- 15–19 years · teens
- 5.7%
- 20–34 years
- 25.4%
- 35–54 years
- 27.9%
- 55–64 years
- 10.8%
- 65 years and over
- 7.5%
NT avg 7%
NT avg 14%
NT avg 6.1%
NT avg 25.2%
NT avg 28.3%
NT avg 10.4%
NT avg 8.9%
Share of all residents of Driver (ABS Statistical Area 2) at the 2021 Census. Bands are the ABS’s own age groups, combined only where whole groups sit side by side - nothing is split or estimated inside a group. The seven shares cover everyone, but they don’t total exactly 100%: the ABS adjusts small counts slightly to protect privacy. The grey marker on each bar is the Northern Territory average, population-weighted across the 68 SA2s in the state and shown for context only - it is not a target or a pass mark.
Households and families
64% of families here have children living at home - about the Northern Territory average of 63%. The largest overseas-born communities are Philippines (4.4%), United Kingdom (2.7%) and Nepal (2.6%). 47% of homes are rented.
Family make-up
Share of all families in the area. A small "other family" group the ABS also counts is not shown.
- Couple with children
- 41.8%
- One-parent family
- 22.5%
- Couple, no children
- 34.6%
NT avg 44.6%
NT avg 18.7%
NT avg 34.7%
What people live in
Share of occupied private dwellings. Other and unstated structures are not shown.
- Separate house
- 65.9%
- Semi-detached / townhouse
- 5.2%
- Flat or apartment
- 28.5%
NT avg 71%
NT avg 12.1%
NT avg 14.9%
Owned or rented
Share of occupied private dwellings. Other and unstated tenures are not shown.
- Owned outright
- 13.3%
- Owned with a mortgage
- 39.2%
- Rented
- 47%
NT avg 15.5%
NT avg 29%
NT avg 49.9%
Figures describe Driver (ABS Statistical Area 2) at the 2021 Census. The grey marker on each bar is the Northern Territory average, population-weighted across the 68 SA2s in the state and shown for context only - it is not a target or a pass mark. The ABS does not publish every breakdown for smaller areas, so some groups may be missing.
Who lives in Driver
Top 5 overseas birthplaces shown · 86.1% born in Australia or a country not in the top five.
- Philippines · established by 2016
- 4.4%
- United Kingdom · established by 2016
- 2.7%
- Nepal · growing since 2016
- 2.6%
- India · established by 2016
- 2.4%
- New Zealand · established by 2016
- 1.8%
NT avg 2.7%
NT avg 2.6%
NT avg 1.1%
NT avg 2.1%
NT avg 1.5%
- Co-located communities
- Driver is home to established Philippines, United Kingdom, Nepal and India communities - each is 2% or more of residents born overseas here, not a ranking of one against another.
- Nearby
- Gray, Durack - Marlow Lagoon and Bakewell also have an established Philippines community.
- Settlement pattern
- Of overseas-born residents who stated when they arrived, 28.4% arrived in the last 5 years (2016–2021) (NT avg 26%) and 28.6% arrived before 2001 (NT avg 33.7%).
- English at home
- Of residents who speak a language other than English at home and stated their English proficiency, 11.4% report speaking English “not well” or “not at all” (NT avg 11.1%) - a self-reported ABS figure across all languages combined, not a judgement of any one community.
Figures describe Driver (ABS Statistical Area 2) at the 2021 Census. The grey marker on each bar is the Northern Territory average, population-weighted across the 68 SA2s in the state and shown for context only - it is not a target or a pass mark. The ABS publishes only the five largest communities per suburb, so a name missing from the list didn’t rank in the top five - not that nobody from it lives here. “Established by 2016” means that community was already a comparable share of the population at the 2016 Census; “growing since 2016” means its share has grown substantially since then. Both are facts about population change, not a ranking of one community against another.
Socio-economic index (SEIFA)
- Decile (1 lowest – 10 highest)
- Decile 4 of 10
- Where this sits in NT
- bottom 40% of Northern Territory areas
IRSAD (the Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage) ranks this SA2 against every other area in Australia on income, education, occupation and other Census indicators, then groups them into ten equal-sized deciles. It's a relative comparison of the whole area - not a safety, liveability, or school-quality measure, and it says nothing about any individual household.
Which way this area is moving
A single census tells you what Driver is like now. Three tell you which way it has been heading. These are the 2011, 2016 and 2021 Censuses counted on today's boundaries.
Since 2011, Driver has grown older, with a smaller share of children, more residents born overseas and more residents speaking another language at home.
- People counted
- −215 people since 2011
- Median age
- +5 years since 2011
- Children aged 0–14
- −3.9 pts since 2011
- Born overseas
- +6.6 pts since 2011
- Speak another language at home
- +7.4 pts since 2011
Usual residents counted on Census night.
Half the residents are older than this, half younger.
Share of all residents. The clearest signal of families arriving or moving on.
Share of all residents born outside Australia.
Share of residents who stated a language, speaking one other than English at home.
The dashed line is the median across the areas we profile in Northern Territory - up to 58, counting only those that report that same measure at all three Censuses, which differs slightly by measure. It is a typical area to read this one against, not a state total, and not a target this suburb is meant to hit. Each chart carries its own axis, drawn to fit its own numbers, so compare the labelled values rather than the steepness of one chart against another. Every figure is an ABS published count, or a share of two of them - there is no index or score here, and a direction is not a verdict: a rising median age or a falling share of children is simply a change, not a better or worse suburb. The three censuses are reported on 2021 SA2 boundaries, so changes are not caused by boundary redraws. ABS adjusts small counts slightly to protect confidentiality, so treat small movements as noise.
Lifestyle & getting around
Everything mapped inside the Driver boundary, plus how long it takes to leave it. Counts are of features tagged in OpenStreetMap - we don't score or rank them, and each one is shown next to the middle NT area so a number means something.
Everyday essentials
Supermarkets
Middle NT area: 1
GPs & clinics
Middle NT area: 0
Parks
Middle NT area: 6
Playgrounds
Middle NT area: 2
Train stations
Middle NT area: 0
Libraries
Middle NT area: 0
Community & recreation
Places of worship
Middle NT area: 0
Community centres
Middle NT area: 0
Swimming pools
Middle NT area: 0
Sports centres
Middle NT area: 0
Getting out of the area
-
Train to the city
Not publishedThe Northern Territory has no urban passenger rail network, so there is no train travel time to publish.
-
Nearest emergency department
MappedRoyal Darwin Hospital · 17.6 km
Straight-line distance from the middle of this area to the nearest hospital tagged with an emergency department - not a drive time, and not necessarily the closest by road. General emergency departments treat children as well as adults. In an emergency call 000; do not plan around this figure.
Counts are of features tagged in OpenStreetMap inside the Driver boundary, not a register of everything that exists - community mapping is uneven, so a zero can mean "not mapped" rather than "not there", and a shop or clinic just over the boundary won't appear here even if it is the one you'd use. “Middle NT area” is the median count across the 68 Northern Territory areas we hold counts for - context, not a target. Areas differ hugely in size, so we never turn these counts into a rate, index or score. Verify anything you're relying on with a local directory or a visit.
Risks & things to check
The checks families run one by one before committing to Driver, in one place. Every line is an official published record for the Driver area - we don't rate, score or rank any of them, and a line we can't answer says so.
-
Flooding
Not publishedNo free statewide flood overlay is published for NT yet, so we show none. Check the local council's planning maps.
-
Bushfire
Not publishedWe hold official bushfire mapping for Victoria and New South Wales only - nothing is published here for NT yet. Check the state fire service's mapping.
-
Heritage controls
Not publishedWe hold official heritage overlay mapping for Victoria and New South Wales only - nothing is published here for NT yet. Check the local council's planning scheme and the state heritage register.
-
Traffic noise
Main roads onlyChung Wah Terrace · University Avenue · Elrundie Avenue · +1 more
No freeway or highway is mapped inside this area. 4 named main roads (arterial or connector) run through it. Roads are counted by name, not by mapped segment.
-
Aircraft noise
Not publishedWe hold official aircraft-noise mapping for Victoria and New South Wales only - nothing is published here for NT yet. Check the airport's noise contours and the local planning scheme.
-
Land contamination checks
Not mappedWe hold official contaminated-land overlay mapping for Victoria only - nothing is published here for NT yet. Check the state environment authority's contaminated land register and the local planning scheme.
-
Acid sulfate soils
Not publishedWe hold acid sulfate soil mapping for Victoria and New South Wales only - nothing is published here for NT yet. Coastal and estuarine land is where these soils occur; check the state's soil mapping and the local planning scheme.
-
Recorded crime
Not publishedNT does not release the suburb-level incident counts we republish for New South Wales and Victoria, so we show none here.
-
Social housing
Census figure8.1% rented from a state or territory housing authority · 0.3% from a community housing provider
Share of occupied private dwellings here with a stated tenure (Census 2021). The middle NT area is 7.5% public and 0.8% community, across 62 areas. Listed because families ask; it is a fact about who owns the homes, not a judgement about the people in them.
Hazard lines republish the extent of an official overlay across the whole Driver area - they are not a risk rating, hazard score or insurance assessment, and we compute none. A specific address inside the area may or may not be affected: check the current planning scheme and your insurer. Not financial or insurance advice. The traffic line names the roads mapped inside the area - it is not a noise measurement or a decibel estimate, and we compute neither: what a specific home hears depends on distance, traffic volume, speed, barriers and terrain, which no free dataset publishes. The heritage, aircraft-noise and land-contamination lines are planning controls rather than hazards, and apply property by property - the contamination line flags land an audit must check before it is used for housing or childcare, never land found to be contaminated. The acid-sulfate line covers coastal and estuarine land only, because that is where those soils form - inland, "none mapped" means outside the mapped zone, not a soil test. We don't yet cover EPA notices, mine subsidence, landslide or coastal erosion - where a line is missing, treat it as not checked rather than clear.
What's being built here
1 new home was approved in Driver in the year to June 2025. Councils approved 4 new dwellings here across the 3 years to June 2025 - an approval is permission to build, not a home that exists yet.
Approved in the year to June 2025
Middle NT area: 9
Separate houses
Private sector, over the 3 of these 6 years where the breakdown is published
Townhouses & apartments
Private sector, over the 3 of these 6 years where the breakdown is published
The ABS did not publish a figure for every year between 2020 and 2025 here, so we draw no line - a chart with a hole closed up would misstate the shape of the change.
An approval is not a building. These are dwellings a council approved; some are never built, and the ones that are usually take years, so this is a signal of what is planned around a suburb, not a count of homes standing in it. It is also not a forecast - nothing here is projected forward. The total covers every dwelling approved, public and private; the houses and apartments figures are the private-sector split the ABS publishes, and the two do not add up to the total wherever public housing was approved. Figures are for the whole Driver statistical area, which usually covers more than one suburb, and are counts only - never divided by land area or population, and never combined into a score. The dashed line is the median of the 21Northern Territory areas with a complete series - a typical area, for context, not a target or a pass mark.
Housing cost pressure
In Driver, 24.7% of renting households spend more than 30% of their income on rent, and 10% of households with a mortgage spend more than 30% on repayments - the ABS's stretched-household threshold (Census 2021).
How many households here are stretched by what they pay for housing. The 30% line is the ABS's own long-standing threshold - these are their published figures, not our calculation.
- Mortgage over 30% of income
- 10%
- Rent over 30% of income
- 24.7%
NT avg 11.2%
Share of households WITH a mortgage whose repayments take more than 30% of income. That's 36 of 300 households with a stated repayment.
NT avg 16.7%
Share of RENTING households whose rent takes more than 30% of income. That's 107 of 387 households with a stated rent.
The two figures cover different households - one counts only households paying off a mortgage, the other only households renting - so they are shown separately and must not be added or averaged. Income is the ABS's imputed household income; their published percentage also counts households that did not state a repayment or rent, which is why it does not equal the two counts above divided by each other. The grey marker on each bar is the NT average, weighted by household base across the SA2s in the state that report each figure (47 for mortgage and 62 for rent), and is context only - not a target. Census 2021 - housing costs have moved since. Not financial advice.
Where did the gain come from?
+29Reading the streams: overseas arrivals were the dominant force - more came from abroad than the suburb grew on its own.
Other SA2s in Palmerston
The next zoom out - sorted by 1-year growth
- 01Palmerston - South+3.9%9,070 ppl
- 02Durack - Marlow Lagoon+1.3%5,073 ppl
- 03Woodroffe+1.2%3,538 ppl
- 04Palmerston - North+1.1%4,949 ppl
- 05Rosebery - Bellamack+1.0%7,223 ppl
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