Coolbellup history: North Lake, the Housing Commission and The Tempest

Coolbellup was the name given in 1957 to land the State Housing Commission had taken over three years earlier. The choice of an Aboriginal name and the Shakespearean street names both date from that planned start.

How Coolbellup got its name

Landgate records Coolbellup as the Aboriginal name of a lake, written down by A C Gregory in 1842. R M King’s surveys of 1877 used the local name North Lake, and both names then appeared on plans. The lake lies just east of the suburb.

In 1954 the State Housing Commission resumed most of the land west of the lake, and Landgate notes that a meeting in January 1957 chose Coolbellup ahead of North Lake. A 1992 local history newsletter held by the City of Cockburn dates the new postal district of 1,200 acres to 30 January 1957 and says none of the wetlands fell inside it. The City’s local history site says the name was not in common use until the early 1960s, when people began moving in.

Before the suburb

The same newsletter describes the lakes of the area as camping grounds for Aboriginal people, and a source of turtle and wildfowl. It records that people from Pinjarra, Mandurah and Armadale said their parents had camped there for long periods.

Captain George Robb’s ship Leda anchored in Gage Roads on 15 January 1830. Robb and his farm manager, Sydney Smith, applied for a grant of 2,000 acres that took in present-day Coolbellup, but Robb never returned to the colony. Charles Manning claimed the grant as abandoned land in 1854, and in 1899 it was cut into 42 sections.

The higher, drier ground that is now Coolbellup was used mainly for grazing, while the wetter land west of Stock Road suited market gardens. In 1920 George McKay subdivided land west of the lake, but only 13 of his 60 lots sold in five years, and the area stayed in cattle and pig farming.

How it grew

In 1954 the State Housing Commission took over about five square kilometres of Hamilton Hill to house a fast-growing post-war population. Building started by 1964 near Stock Road and Forrest Road and moved north and east. Most houses were brick, some blocks of flats were added, and many newly arrived migrant families moved in.

The suburb filled quickly. Coolbellup Primary School opened on 8 February 1965 with 212 pupils, and by the end of 1966 it had 661. East Coolbellup Primary School, later North Lake Primary, opened by the end of 1966. A Daily News report of 11 May 1966 put the population at 3,800, with another 500 houses close to finished. In 1967 Coolbellup became the site of the nation’s first transitory migrant flats, and the Native Welfare Department bought dozens of houses so Aboriginal families could live in the new suburb.

The shopping centre opened in 1967 and the Coolbellup Hotel in 1969. A revitalisation program in the late 1990s renamed the Yaralla flats, built in the late 1960s, as Juliet Court. In 2007 Coolbellup, North Lake and Koorilla primary schools were merged into Coolbellup Community School, and in 2014 the City adopted the Coolbellup Revitalisation Strategy, changing density codings the next year.

Places that tell the story

The street map is the clearest record of the suburb’s planned start. A few streets, such as Counsel Road and Batten Street, were named after early settlers from a Shire of Cockburn list. In 1964 the rest were named after Shakespeare’s characters to mark 400 years since his birth, most of them from The Tempest. Tempest Park, beside Coolbellup Avenue, carries the play’s name.

Juliet Court, the name given to the Yaralla flats in the late 1990s, was one of the flat blocks built in the late 1960s. Len Packham Reserve now shares its playing fields and tennis courts with Coolbellup Community School.

Coolbellup today

The 2021 Census counted 5,698 people in Coolbellup. A Woolworths-anchored shopping centre opened in December 2018, and the City’s town centre structure plan allows denser housing around it.

More about Coolbellup

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

Sources

• Landgate: Perth and surrounds suburb names (archived 2022)
• City of Cockburn local history: Know Your Suburb, Coolbellup (1992)
• City of Cockburn local history: Building Coolbellup, 1960s
• City of Cockburn local history: Yaralla flats (later Juliet Court), 1969
• WA Government: New $7.6 million primary school opened in Coolbellup (2007)
• City of Cockburn: Coolbellup Revitalisation Strategy
• City of Cockburn: Coolbellup Town Centre
• Australian Property Journal: Coolbellup Village Shopping Centre
• ABS 2021 Census QuickStats: Coolbellup

Top image: North Lake in Beeliar Regional Park, the lake behind Coolbellup’s name, 2021. Photo: Calistemon, 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