Medina history: the refinery town, Margaret Feilman’s plan and Chalk Hill

Medina was planned in the early 1950s, after the State Government agreed to bring an oil refinery to Kwinana. It was the first neighbourhood of the new town, and much of its original layout is still in place.

How Medina got its name

Landgate records that Medina was the first of the Kwinana suburbs to be named after ships. The Medina arrived at the Swan River Colony in July 1830 with 51 passengers on board. The ship’s name is believed to come from a river on the Isle of Wight, and Medina was approved as a suburb name in 1953.

The City of Kwinana says the neighbourhoods of the new town were named after early ships that brought settlers to Western Australia, with streets and reserves named after their crews and passengers.

Before the suburb

Chalk Hill, the limestone ridge on the western edge of the suburb, was a campsite for Aboriginal people. It sits on a north to south line of freshwater lakes and springs that the Whadjuk Nyoongar used for hunting and gathering, and the City of Kwinana records that Nyoongar people lit fires on Chalk Hill to show others where they were.

In the 1850s Thomas and Eliza Smirk bought land that took in the future townsite, and ran a dairy farm and market garden there. Smirk Cottage, begun around 1902, still stands at 2 Beacham Crescent.

How it grew

In the early 1950s the State Government signed an agreement with the oil company now known as BP to build a refinery and develop Kwinana as an industrial area. The government also undertook to build state housing for refinery workers, and engaged Margaret Feilman, Perth’s first female town planner, to design the new town.

Feilman placed the townsite south of Thomas Road, where the Chalk Hill ridge sheltered it from the prevailing winds, and kept a belt of bushland between the houses and the industrial area. About 16 per cent of the townsite was set aside as bush reserves. Construction began in 1952.

On 18 December 1953 Medina and its surrounds were placed under a single appointed commissioner, Harry Lester McGuigan, who ran local affairs until an elected board took over in 1961. His first office, opened in 1954, was a small State Housing dwelling on Medina Avenue. The shopping centre on Pace Road and the primary school on Medina Avenue were both built in 1954.

Queen Elizabeth Hall, built for £17,500 and named to mark the royal visit to Western Australia, opened on 18 June 1955 with more than 900 people attending. Its wandoo floor came from a dance floor built at the University of Western Australia for that visit.

In the 1950s and 1960s local Aboriginal families camped on Chalk Hill, some of them working at the refinery. Theresa and Robert Walley were the first Aboriginal family to settle in Medina in the 1960s, and Walley Bridge is named after them.

Places that tell the story

Queen Elizabeth Hall at 7 Harley Way still serves as a town hall, after being altered and extended around 2012. The original Medina Primary School buildings form a U around a quadrangle. Harry McGuigan Park on Medina Avenue is a bushland reserve named after the commissioner. The Chalk Hill lookout is reached from Beacham Crescent, and Smirk Cottage is open on the first Sunday of each month.

Medina today

The National Trust of WA classified the Medina townsite as a historic townsite on 14 May 2007, and several of its buildings and reserves are on the City of Kwinana heritage list. The refinery the town was built for stopped refining in 2021 and now operates as a fuel import terminal.

More about Medina

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

Sources

• Landgate: Perth and surrounds suburb names (archived 2022)
• City of Kwinana: History and heritage
• inHerit: Medina Townsite
• inHerit: Chalk Hill
• inHerit: Queen Elizabeth Hall, Medina
• inHerit: Harry McGuigan Park
• inHerit: First Municipal Roads Board Office, Medina
• inHerit: Medina Shopping Centre
• WA Government: BP Kwinana closure (2020)
• inHerit: Medina State School
• City of Kwinana: Heritage buildings and museums
• Kwinana 1918 to 2018 snapshot

Top image: Shops on Pace Road, Medina, September 2020. 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