A Brief History of the City of South Perth

The 1845 map of South Perth by A Hillman; followed by the 1992 City map reproduced from the frontispiece of Peninsular City
The City of South Perth, the ‘Peninsular City’, occupies an area of land bordered on three sides by river water. To the north is the Swan River with the wide ‘Perth Water’. District of the City of Perth lies across the River: with the Narrows Bridge as the link between the two sides, carrying the Kwinana Freeway south.

The 1845 Hillman map still shows the ‘track to Canning District’, but by 1845 the situation had completely changed following the construction of the first causeway across the Swan, using the ‘Heirisson Islands’ as stepping stones. There was now a direct land-link from Perth to the south, and the ferry across The Narrows was little used. South Perth and the peninsular were no longer a necessary link in the southward route.

The present Narrows Bridge was opened only in 1959, but this illustration was drawn in 1929 (for Western Australia’s first Centenary) as an ‘artist’s impression’ of what Perth and South Perth could look like in 2020, with the title A Bicentennial Dream. The artist would have been surprised to see that all this kind of development was in place by the 1970s!

Perth in 2029 – A Bicentennial Dream. In July 1929,the Western Mail printed this ‘artist’s impression’ of the possible appearance of Perth and South Perth 100 years on. It is an interesting drawing and a remarkably accurate forecast, but D L Davidson would not have been impressed with the prominence of a Narrows Bridge! Courtesy West Australian Newspapers.

To the South is the Canning River, crossed by the Mount Henry Bridge which carries the Kwinana Freeway to the southern suburbs of the Perth Metropolitan Area and beyond.

Premier Ray O’Connor and South Perth Mayor George Burnett celebrate the opening of Mount Henry Bridge in 1982. City of South Perth photograph.

This 1982 photograph marks the opening of the Mount Henry Bridge and the Southern Extension to the Kwinana Freeway. The opening was performed by then South Perth Mayor George Burnett and then State Premier Ray O’Connor.

To the west is Melville Water, a very wide stretch of water which is the confluence of the Swan and Canning Rivers. At the Canning’s narrowest point, South Perth is linked on the west via the Canning Bridge to the southern shore of the Swan River, heading down river to the Indian Ocean port of Fremantle. Only to the east at the base of the Peninsula is there a land link to other local authorities.

South Perth was one of the earliest areas following settlement of the Swan River Colony by British migrants in 1829. For most of the 19th Century the Peninsula was used predominantly for agriculture and horticulture, while between 1835 and 1859 the Colony’s first successful wind-powered flour mill (‘Shenton’s Mill’) operated on Mill Point, the north-western tip of the Peninsula: the stone building is still preserved as a National Trust property.

This photographic view of the mill was taken in 1905. It appears to be in reverse image.

A 1904 photograph of the 1880 version of Shenton’s Mill, then rebuilt with double-deck verandahs, a rooftop lookout and an adjacent dance hall, as the Alta Gardens Hotel, by the ex-convict architect-engineer ‘Satan’ Browne.

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