Merriwa history: sheep leases, the name Hester and a 1990s suburb

Merriwa sits in a district that was grazed under pastoral leases from the 1880s. Its name was settled in 1980, and by the late 1990s it was a suburb with its own neighbourhood centre.

How Merriwa got its name

Landgate says the City of Wanneroo first put forward the name Hester, after an early landowner. Hester was approved in 1980, but Australia Post objected because it would duplicate an existing name. The City then proposed Merriwa, which Landgate gives as an Aboriginal word meaning “a good place”, and that name was approved on 31 March 1980.

Before the suburb

The City of Wanneroo says that before 1834 the Whadjuk and Yued people, two Noongar language groups, moved across the coastal sandplain according to the six Noongar seasons.

After colonisation, stock grazed on Crown land in the district without any legal right until pastoral leases were bought in the 1880s. The State heritage record for the Mindarie Pastoral Company homestead names the Gibbs, Higham, Maley and Clarkson families among those who took up leases in the Wanneroo district. In 1888 Bernard Drummond Clarkson took up an 18,000 acre grant at nearby Mindarie for sheep. That property was sold in 1958, and subdivision of the land began in 1959.

How it grew

By the late 1990s Merriwa had houses, shops and a neighbourhood centre. In March 1998 the City of Wanneroo’s commissioners agreed to rezone two lots on Baltimore Parade from a fast food zone to mixed business. The lots were part of a strip of commercial and fast food uses south of the Merriwa (South) Neighbourhood Centre. The same meeting’s agenda listed an item on changing the name of a portion of Merriwa.

Places that tell the story

Merriwa Primary School, on Baltimore Parade, has an Education Support Centre on the same site. The school says it was chosen in 2011 as a pilot school for a positive behaviour program.

Merriwa today

The 2021 Census counted 5,587 people in Merriwa, with a median age of 40. Buses through the suburb link it to the Clarkson and Butler stations on the Yanchep Line.

More about Merriwa

For what Merriwa is like to live in now, read our Merriwa suburb profile. If you own a property in Merriwa and are thinking about selling, start with buyers for your property.

Sources

• Landgate: Perth and surrounds suburb names (archived 2022)
• City of Wanneroo: History of Wanneroo
• inHerit: Mindarie Pastoral Company Homestead (ruins), Clarkson
• City of Wanneroo: Joint Commissioners’ meeting minutes, 24 March 1998
• Merriwa Primary School: Overview
• ABS 2021 Census QuickStats: Merriwa (WA)

Top image: Merriwa Plaza on Baltimore Parade, Merriwa, 2011. Photo: Outrune, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Dates and names are drawn from the sources above. Where sources differ, we have said so or given an approximate date.

By Key Performance Real Estate, 338 Beaufort Street, Perth