Balga history: the grass tree name, the Mirrabooka plan and the TAFE campus

Balga was meant to house the workers of a new satellite city at Mirrabooka. The city was never finished, but the State Housing Commission built Balga anyway, mostly between 1964 and 1970.

How Balga got its name

Landgate gives Balga as the Aboriginal word for the grass tree, Xanthorrhoea. The name was picked in 1954 for part of the State Housing Commission’s Mirrabooka Project Area, a planned subdivision between Yokine and Wanneroo that also took in Nollamara and Yirrigan. Landgate dates the first Balga street layout to 1959.

The City of Stirling gives the same meaning and the same year, 1954.

Before the suburb

The City of Stirling’s thematic history says Wadjak Nyoongar people traditionally occupied the country that is now metropolitan Perth, and that Mooro country, running from the coast to the Swan River and north beyond Yanchep, lies within the City of Stirling.

After colonisation, the Balga area was part of a grant made to T.R.C. Walters in 1840. Until the late 1950s it was used mainly for market gardens and poultry farms.

How it grew

In 1950 the State Housing Commission resumed land at Balga for the Mirrabooka satellite city, which was also to take in Nollamara, Westminster and the northern part of Dianella. Mirrabooka was planned as a regional centre of 16,000 houses with civic and recreational facilities, and the City says Balga’s residents were expected to work at Mirrabooka and in the northern industrial areas.

The satellite city was never completed, and the thematic history records that the proposal was abandoned in 1982. The Commission still went ahead at Balga. Its houses were largely single-storey brick and tile on lots of about 700 square metres.

Balga Senior High School opened in 1970 and the Balga TAFE campus was set up in 1972. In 1994 residents asked the City of Stirling to rename the southern part of Balga, and that area is now the suburb of Westminster.

Places that tell the story

Princess Wallington Reserve, with its aquatic centre and playing fields, is the largest reserve and the City describes it as a focal point for the community. The City lists Fletching Climping Reserve as a locally significant natural area.

The TAFE campus on Loxwood Road now focuses on building and construction trades. In December 2024 the State Government opened its Construction Skills Innovation Hub, which includes a trades workshop, a simulated smart home for electrical apprentices and a three-storey learning building, and replaced 22 transportable classrooms.

Balga today

The 2021 Census counted 13,864 people in Balga. Its 1960s brick houses, its high school and its trades campus all date from the State Housing years, and high frequency buses now link it with Mirrabooka, Warwick and Bayswater.

More about Balga

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

Sources

• Landgate: Perth and surrounds suburb names (archived 2022)
• City of Stirling: Balga suburb page
• City of Stirling: Westminster suburb page
• City of Stirling: A Thematic History of the City of Stirling (2018)
• Balga Senior High School
• WA Government: $51.1 million TAFE upgrade to help train tradies of the future (5 December 2024)
• ABS 2021 Census QuickStats: Balga

Top image: Fieldgate Square shops, Balga, 2012. Photo: Orderinchaos, 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