New South Wales (abbreviated as NSW) is Australia's most populous state, located in the south-east of the country, north of Victoria and south of Queensland. The state is bordered on the north by Queensland, on the west by South Australia, and on the south by Victoria. Its coast faces the Tasman Sea. New South Wales contains two Federal enclaves: the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), and the Jervis Bay Territory.

The estimated population of New South Wales at the end of June 2007 was 6.89 million people. Population grew by 1.1% over the preceding year, lower than the national rate of 1.5%. 62.9% of NSW's population is based in Sydney.

Since the 1970s, New South Wales has undergone an increasingly rapid economic and social transformation. Old industries such as steel and shipbuilding have largely disappeared, and although agriculture remains important its share of the state's income is smaller than ever before. New industries such as information technology and financial services are largely centred in Sydney and have risen to take their place with many companies having their Australian headquarters in Sydney CBD. In addition, the Macquarie Park area of Sydney has attracted the Australian headquarters of many information technology firms.

New South Wales' three major cities are Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong which all lie along the coast. Other notable settlements include Albury, a large town which borders with Victoria; Broken Hill, the most westerly large town; Dubbo; Orange, Bowral, Bathurst, home of the Bathurst 1000; Port Macquarie, Tamworth, home to the country music festival; Armidale, Inverell, Lismore, Nowra, Gosford, Griffith, Queanbeyan, Leeton, Wagga Wagga, Goulburn, where a large proportion of the Australia's fruit is grown and Coffs Harbour, a popular tourist destination.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "New South Wales".