I've been on long service leave for a month and it's been crap in Adelaide. If it wasn't for doing house improvements, the holiday would be a complete disaster. I've had about 6 sails. One excellent one in Adelaide. Another good one in Stansbury. The rest crap.
My question is, in descenting order, what cities are the best for Windsurfing (including smaller centres like Newcastle and Cairns). The criterion is: the city must have good employment prospects (ie: Gove NT excellent dry season trade winds but crap employment prospects, so not considered, same thing for Cocos Island and Norfolk Island). The spot criterion is any sort of wind: B&J, freeride, anything that gets you out and planing. Big gear sessions included. The centre must have spots that can be driven to less than 50km to make it practical for after work sessions etc. Having only sailed in SA, this would be my approximate guess:
Geraldton
Perth
Hobart
Cairns (trade winds)
Melbourne
Brisbane
Newcastle
Adelaide
Sydney
Darwin (trade winds)
Thoughts ?
For Ocean sailing you couldn't beat Perth, great constant winds seabreezes from Oct to March, Fronts, winter storms and easterlies April to Sept. Perth is a city of 2 million, plenty of jobs, and everything a big city has to offer. Mandurah would be next, 80km south of better, 85,000 population, better windsurfing spots than perth, great community of highly passionate windsurfers, with ocean, wavesailing and flat water estuary, and briliant speedsailing spots, winds are slightly lighter than perth, but sometimes stronger and better? Gero great for wind and waves, but city of about 20,000 and not the best employment prospects. I had a chance to live there but chose Mandurah instead.
For WA this would be my list, and I reckon, it would be my Australia list as well. I moved from Melb in 1994, and have had the best windsurfing and happiest days of my life in Perth and Mandurah. For me personally Mandurah is the overall no.1 windsurfing spot in Australia. For what you wanted =
Perth
Mandurah
Gero
+1^
There are other spots that are better sometimes, Gnarloo, Maragarets, Esperance, Gero for waves. Mandurah has some nice waves, but needs a decent swell, which is lacking during summer seabreezes. Shark Bay for early season winds. Albany when it's trophed out on the west coast.
But for overall sailing, Mandurah has the averages. That's one of the reasons, Mandurah Mob has done so well in the GTC this year. There's a 1hr train ride to Perth, the freeway can get a bit clogged in peak hour, but people do it. Rockingham also has some nice sailing spots, the seabreeze is a bit stronger there, it's half way between Perth and Mandurah. So that's a possibility as well.
Try living in a van for a year... you get to sail at the best locations and at the best times for wind.
Hamilton Is, check its wind stats, get a job at one of the bars, work nights, sail days 
Buy two places, South Coast NSW in the summer and Cairns in the winter. Or buy a boat and sail North or South every six months.
20 years ago, I decided to leave Darwin and move to either Adelaide or Perth. I chose these cities because back then, they were the cheapest cities (other than Hobart) and it was possible to rent a flat on the dole (to look for work) with no additional support. I lived in both cities for a few months. I lived in Glenalough during my stay in Perth. Glenalough was an easy pushbike distance from the city, but, I finally decided on Adelaide. This was before I started Windsurfing BTW !
What about the back line ?. If your boss told you that you had to relocate your job to one of the following cities, what city would you choose for Windsurfing ? and why ?
Brisbane
Newcastle
Adelaide
Sydney
Never Sydney, it's just too big, congested and exspensive.
Either Brisbane and Newcastle would be great. Both have strong windsurfing communities for GPS, bump and jump and wave sailing. For typical bay and lake sailing, 7.9 and 7.0 would be your most used sails. Newcastle has summer NE sea breezes, frontal SEers and winter westerlies. Brisbane has Spring NE seabreezes, Summer SE seabreezes and winter westerlies.
There are surprisingly few spots in Sydney that offer good access to open waters, and the best of them is Botany Bay which is normally crowded and has a refinery on one shore, an airport on the other, and a container port on the third. And as John mentions, it takes forever to get anywhere.
Newcastle/Lake Mac has excellent windsurfing. There's flat water spots for every wind direction within a short drive of wherever you live around the lake. I tend to think the sea breezes winds are consistently stronger than in Sydney, perhaps because of the flatter terrain and the smaller amount of built-up ground. I wasn't doing much wavesailing when I lived on the south end of the Lake, but apart from perhaps an area in the middle of the eastern side, the wavesailing is pretty good from memory.
Wollongong is perhaps an option although it could be very hard to choose it over Newcastle/Lake Mac if you were looking in central eastern NSW. It's got a stronger scene than Newcastle I think, if you compare it to the overall population.
Manly in Queensland is a great place to live and windsurf. In fact, it is hard to go past any coastal location in Queensland ... beautiful one day, perfect the next. Photo was taken from RQYS this afternoon.
Lot of Qld passion in the answers here, and when it's on (remember that time?!) it's great...but it's far and few between , and dark at 6.30 doesn't allow for much after work sailing time.
Hands down by a mile it's WA, only down side is ribbon weed and hungry sharks :)
6 weeks in a WA summer will = more wind than 6 months in Qld, checkout the WA forum page and windsurfing WA on FB to see what life sub 7m looks like! .... windsurfing is so much more fun on small gear.
Yep, WA in summer is THE place for consistent good wind and great waves, but I found the winters pretty cold and wet.
At least Qld is good for raceboards all year round 
I live at Lake Macquarie NSW. When I started out 10 years ago I thought the wind sucked. Then I realised if I was willing to drive up to 30 - 40 minutes the ability to sail regularly and throughout the year was available.
I do most of my sailing within 10 minutes of where I live and it gives me 4 different wind direction options. Mostly bump and jump/ free ride lake sailing. If I am willing to drive the 30-40 minutes or the wind direction or season demands it I then have multiple wave sailing options, one of the best speed sailing locations in Australia (Budgie), and more Lake options with different wind directions.
Lake Macquarie for me
Thanks for the replies guys. I's sort of inline with what I thought. I do lots of FIFO work on the east coast. Pity I couldn't take some gear. My schedule is too dynamic to do that on work trips.
