Bertram history: the Nine Mile stop, the old Armadale road and the Peel Estate

Bertram is one of Kwinana’s newest suburbs, but the roads around it are old. Johnson Road follows the route of a 1920s settlement railway, and the remains of an earlier track between Armadale and Rockingham are recorded near its corner with Thomas Road.

How Bertram got its name

Landgate records that Bertram takes its name from a Group Settler who owned land in the area in the 1920s. The locality was approved on 17 December 1998.

Before the suburb

The City of Kwinana is on the traditional lands of the Nyoongar people, and the City lists The Spectacles wetlands among the area’s key camping, hunting and gathering places.

A winding sandy track between Armadale and Rockingham was in use from the 1850s. In the 1920s it was given a compacted limestone base, at a time when Rockingham Road Board chairman Sam Dvoretsky was pushing for roads to Fremantle, Armadale and Serpentine.

How it grew

In the 1920s the State set out to drain and settle the Peel Estate. A light railway was built south from Jandakot, with its stops named by their distance in miles. It ran almost due south along the line of Johnson Road to Nine Mile, where Johnson Road meets Thomas Road, then on to Eleven Mile and Thirteen Mile, later Wellard. A branch from Nine Mile ran beside Thomas Road, mainly for firewood cutters.

The group and soldier settlement farms of the Peel Estate mostly failed, and many were abandoned by the 1930s.

Places that tell the story

The City of Kwinana’s heritage list records the 9 Mile Dumps site on Thomas Road, dating from about 1925, and the route of the former Armadale to Rockingham road. Both are on the City’s 2022 heritage list.

Bertram today

Bertram is now a suburb of houses with its own primary school on Champion Drive, the William Bertram Community Centre on Johnson Road, local shops and a network of small parks and wetland walks.

More about Bertram

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

Sources

• Landgate: Perth and surrounds suburb names (archived 2022)
• inHerit: 13 Mile, Bertram Road (Peel Estate railway)
• inHerit: Old Armadale to Rockingham Road
• inHerit: 9 Mile Dumps site
• City of Kwinana: History and heritage
• City of Kwinana: Heritage List 2022

Top image: Centennial Avenue, Bertram, January 2023. Photo: Orderinchaos, CC BY-SA 4.0, 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