Mindarie history: the Clarkson sheep run, Cooper’s Lime Kilns and Catalina

For about 70 years Mindarie was sheep country held by the Clarkson family. Lime burners worked the limestone here in the Depression, and the name itself comes from a lake recorded in 1874.

How Mindarie got its name

Landgate says the suburb takes its name from Mindarie Lake. The name is Aboriginal and was first written down by Alexander Forrest in 1874. Landgate gives its meaning as possibly “the place near which is held a ceremony” or “green water”. This suburb was first meant to be called Clarkson, but the two names were swapped, and Mindarie was approved on 6 May 1985. The name was already in local use: the Clarkson family’s sheep run here was held by the Mindarie Pastoral Company.

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.

In 1888 Bernard Drummond Clarkson took up an 18,000 acre grant at Mindarie, grazing sheep he brought down from his Yalgoo property, Meeka Station. The family’s company was the Mindarie Pastoral Company. A later house was built near the original homestead around 1951, and in 1958 the property was sold. Subdivision began in 1959, and in 1961 Quinns Road was built on land resumed from the company’s holding. The homestead site is now in neighbouring Clarkson, a name the Shire of Wanneroo proposed in 1979 to honour an early settler who held large leases in the area.

How it grew

The limestone along the coast brought another industry. In 1932 Henry Cooper and his sons built lime kilns near Quinns Rocks. The Heritage Council links them to the hardship of the Depression, noting that the Cooper family gave work to assisted migrants and the unemployed. Albert Facey wrote about working as a lime burner at Quinns Rocks in A Fortunate Life.

The latest stage of building is Catalina, a 180 hectare estate across Mindarie and Clarkson. It is run by the Catalina Regional Council, formed in 2006 for the project, which represents seven local governments that own the land. Catalina Beach, its Mindarie precinct, gained beach access in January 2023.

Places that tell the story

Cooper’s Lime Kilns stand in Coopers Park on Fairport Vista. They are on the State Register of Heritage Places, and the City of Wanneroo connects them with the early development of Quinns Rocks and the State’s lime burning industry. Of the two kilns, the Heritage Council recorded one as partly collapsed and the other in slightly better condition.

The site of the Mindarie Pastoral Company homestead, at 650 Connolly Drive in Clarkson, was adopted onto the City of Wanneroo’s municipal heritage inventory in 1994 as a historic site. The State heritage record mentions lilac trees, bougainvilleas and grape vines from the old garden, but found no ruins left standing when the site was inspected in March 2004.

Mindarie today

The 2021 Census counted 7,867 people in Mindarie. The marina and the new streets at Catalina Beach now sit on land that was a sheep run until the late 1950s.

More about Mindarie

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

Sources

• Landgate: Perth and surrounds suburb names (archived 2022)
• inHerit: Mindarie Pastoral Company Homestead (ruins), Clarkson
• Heritage Council of WA: Cooper’s Lime Kilns, assessment documentation
• City of Wanneroo: Heritage sites
• City of Wanneroo: History of Wanneroo
• Catalina Regional Council
• Satterley: Catalina
• Mindarie Marina
• ABS 2021 Census QuickStats: Mindarie (WA)

Top image: Mindarie Marina from Boston Quays, 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