Erskine history: the Coast Road, the Sutton farm and Len Howard’s park

Erskine sits on land that early Mandurah settlers farmed and travellers crossed on the Coast Road to Bunbury. Its conservation park on the Peel Inlet carries the name of a local campaigner for the estuary.

How Erskine got its name

Landgate says Erskine is named after Lieutenant Archibald Erskine of the 63rd Regiment, who held land in the Murray and Mandurah district and was made a Justice of the Peace for the Murray district in 1831. The name was approved on 5 October 1970. The City of Mandurah’s heritage register gives his rank as Captain, listing a Captain Erskine among the first settlers to follow Thomas Peel’s party into the district, along with Henry Edward Hall and his family and Captain Meares.

Before the suburb

Thomas Peel’s grant was moved to land south of Rockingham that took in the present Mandurah area, and the City’s heritage register dates the start of settlement to 1830, when Peel arrived with about 50 of his settlers. Henry Hall built his cottage on the southern side of the estuary in about 1833.

Eleanor and John Sutton arrived in 1839, and the register describes their farm as prime land reaching from Halls Head to Falcon. The road south, first called Coach Road and later Coast Road, ran from the estuary towards Australind. Stock wells were dug along the Coast Road between Fremantle and Bunbury, one of them at Falcon in 1890. The road stayed unsealed until 1969.

How it grew

Road links across the estuary came in stages. A bridge to Halls Head opened in 1894 and was replaced in 1953, and in 1986 the Mandurah Bypass opened with a new bridge over the estuary. Today the bypass, now Mandurah Road, and Old Coast Road form Erskine’s northern edge.

Len Howard had served in the merchant navy and worked as a bricklayer before he retired to Falcon in 1974. In 1976 he and Brian Devereaux founded the Peel-Preston Preservation Group. The group pushed for a national park between the estuary and the sea south of Mandurah. In 2001, three years after his death, the City renamed Erskine Conservation Park as Len Howard Conservation Park.

Erskine Central Shopping Centre opened on Old Coast Road in November 2003, and by the 2021 Census the suburb had 2,863 private dwellings.

Places that tell the story

Len Howard Conservation Park, with its boardwalk over freshwater pools, keeps a stretch of the Peel Inlet shore as bushland and wetland.

Just outside the suburb, two places on the City’s heritage register mark the earlier farming and travelling story. The Sutton family’s farmhouse and graveyard survive on Apollo Place and Picaroon Place in Halls Head, now among canals and housing. The Falcon stock well, a limestone well about six metres deep in Falcon Reserve on Cobblers Street, is one of the few left from the Coast Road series and was restored by the Falcon Progress Association in 1977.

Erskine today

The 2021 Census counted 5,429 people in Erskine, with a median age of 61. The Novara boat ramp on the estuary is among the features the City lists for the suburb.

More about Erskine

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

Sources

• Landgate: Perth and surrounds suburb names (archived 2022)
• City of Mandurah: Mandurah Heritage Register (May 2014)
• City of Mandurah: Suburb profiles
• Mandurah Community Museum fact sheet: Len Howard
• Friends of Mandurah Community Museum newsletter, February 2021
• Centuria: Erskine Central Shopping Centre
• ABS 2021 Census QuickStats: Erskine

Top image: The shore of the Peel Inlet at Erskine, 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