Orelia history: a Hobart trading ship, a high school and Gilmore College

Orelia takes its name from a trading ship that reached the Swan River from Hobart in 1829. The suburb grew on the northern side of Kwinana’s 1950s new town, around the district’s high school.

How Orelia got its name

Landgate records that Orelia is named after the ship Orelia, which arrived at Fremantle with settlers in October 1829, and that the area began to be developed in 1952. Shipping records compiled by the Freotopia history site give the arrival as 12 October 1829, from Hobart, with 11 passengers. The ship made regular voyages between Van Diemen’s Land and the Swan River in the colony’s early years.

Before the suburb

The area is part of the traditional lands of the Nyoongar people. The City of Kwinana names Sloan’s Reserve, Chalk Hill and The Spectacles as important places for camping, hunting and gathering.

After European settlement the district was farmed. Thomas Peel’s settlement of the 1830s failed, and the soldier and group settlement dairy farms of the 1920s were mostly abandoned by the 1930s.

How it grew

In the early 1950s the State Government agreed with the oil company now known as BP to build a refinery at Kwinana, and took back the failed group settlement farmland for a new town. Margaret Feilman, appointed to lead the planning in 1952, designed it for about 25,000 people, with schools, shops and other facilities within walking distance of houses. Medina was built first, from 1952, followed by the other neighbourhoods.

Kwinana Senior High School was built on Gilmore Avenue and served the district for more than 50 years. In 2003 the State Government announced a $26 million Years 7 to 12 campus to replace it, and Gilmore College opened on the same site at the start of 2008.

Places that tell the story

Gilmore College’s name was endorsed by the Minister for Education on 22 March 2006. It honours the old high school on Gilmore Avenue and the Gilmore, one of the ships Thomas Peel used in 1829 to bring settlers to the region. Part of the former high school land was set aside for housing under a structure plan prepared for LandCorp in 2008.

Orelia today

Orelia is a residential suburb with its own primary school on Bolton Way, the district’s government secondary college on Dargin Place, and parks around Orelia Oval and Sandringham Park.

More about Orelia

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

Sources

• Landgate: Perth and surrounds suburb names (archived 2022)
• Freotopia: Orelia (ship)
• City of Kwinana: History and heritage
• National Trust of Australia: Margaret Feilman 1921 to 2013
• inHerit: Medina Townsite
• Gilmore College: History
• City of Kwinana: Structure plan, Lot D, Kwinana Education Precinct

Top image: Shops at Orelia, 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