Australia has the largest parkrun scene outside Britain: 549 events, of which 544 are the weekly 5K and 5 are junior events. It arrived in 2011 at Main Beach on the Gold Coast and spread from Queensland outwards, which is why Queensland still has the most.
| State or territory | Weekly 5K | junior | Start time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queensland | 139 | 2 | 7:00am, all of them |
| Victoria | 127 | 2 | 8:00am, all of them |
| New South Wales | 123 | 0 | 8:00am — except 19 at 7:00am |
| Western Australia | 63 | 0 | 8:00am — except 7 at 7:00am |
| South Australia | 52 | 1 | 8:00am, all of them |
| Tasmania | 24 | 0 | 9:00am — except Devonport at 8:00am |
| Australian Capital Territory | 10 | 0 | 8:00am, all of them |
| Northern Territory | 6 | 0 | 7:00am, all of them |
Why the time moves
This catches out visitors and interstate travellers constantly, and the logic is worth knowing. Queensland and the Northern Territory do not observe daylight saving, and both are hot: a 7:00am start puts the event before the worst of it. Tasmania is cold and dark in winter, and runs at 9:00am for the same practical reason a British parkrun does. The seven Western Australian events at 7:00am are all in the tropical north — Broome, Port Hedland, Karratha, Kununurra, Onslow, Dampier and Carnarvon — where the same reasoning as Queensland applies.
It is not uniform inside a state either, and that is the part a lookup table would get wrong. Nineteen of the 123 New South Wales events start at 7:00am rather than 8:00 — most of them along the northern coast towards the Queensland border, at Yamba, Ballina, Coffs Harbour, Lismore and Port Macquarie, but Sydney events among them too. All seven of Western Australia's 7:00am starts are in the tropical north: Broome, Port Hedland, Karratha, Kununurra, Onslow, Dampier and Carnarvon. And one Tasmanian event, Devonport, starts at 8:00 while the other 23 start at 9:00. Every time on Verus is read from that event's own page for exactly this reason.
junior parkrun
Australia has only five junior parkruns, against several hundred in Britain. They are a 2km event for children aged 4 to 14, held on Sunday mornings at 8:00am, and they sit in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.
The practical consequence is that in most of Australia the weekly 5K is the family event, and children run it alongside adults rather than having their own.
Doing your first Australian parkrun
- 1 Register once at parkrun.com.au. It is free, takes a couple of minutes, and the barcode works at every parkrun in the world for life — including the one you already registered for in Britain or Ireland.
- 2 Check the start time for the specific event, not the state. Most are 8:00am, Queensland and the Northern Territory are 7:00am and Tasmania is 9:00am — but 19 New South Wales events, 7 Western Australian ones and one Tasmanian one break their state pattern.
- 3 Print your barcode or save it to your phone. Without it you run but do not get a time.
- 4 Arrive about fifteen minutes early for the first-timers briefing.
- 5 Run, jog or walk. There is a tail walker whose job is to finish last.
If you are a visiting parkrunner
Your existing barcode works, unchanged. Nothing needs to be re-registered, and your results appear on the same profile.
Two things differ from a British Saturday. The first is the start time, above. The second is the weather: an Australian summer parkrun in Queensland or the Northern Territory is run in genuine heat even at 7:00am, and the sensible approach is to treat it as a social run rather than an attempt at a personal best.
Verus is not affiliated with parkrun. These listings are compiled from parkrun's own public events data, with each event's start time read from its own page.