Mardella is an outer suburb of

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

, Western Australia, lying approximately south-southeast of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

. It is located within the

Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale The Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale is a local government area in the outer southeastern metropolitan area of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, and has an area of and a population of almost 27,000 as at the 2016 Census. The Shire's seat ...

, and at the 2011 census had a population of 303 people. Although falling within the

Perth metropolitan area The Perth metropolitan region or the Perth metropolitan area is the administrative area and geographical extent of the Western Australian capital city of Perth and its conurbation. It generally includes the coastal strip from Two Rocks in t ...

, Mardella is mostly rural in nature, with a significant proportion of the population engaged in farming.

History

Mardella is named after the Mardella Farm, which was established in the first few decades of European settlement. The names of both Mardella and the nearby Medulla Brook are derived from the same Aboriginal root word. Mardella has been used as a locality name since at least 1898, when a railway siding on the South Western Railway was opened under that name. However, it was only formally gazetted as a suburb in 1997. A community organisation erected a district hall in the 1950s, and at one stage Mardella supported a general store.

Geography

The Serpentine River flows through Mardella, forming parts of its western and southern boundaries. The suburb also contains Medulla Brook, a small

ephemeral Ephemerality (from the Greek word , meaning 'lasting only one day') is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Academically, the term ephemeral constitutionally describes a diverse assortment of things and experiences, fr ...

stream. The western portion of Mardella contains a significant amount of uncleared

bushland In Australia, bushland is a blanket term for land which supports remnant vegetation or land which is disturbed but still retains a predominance of the original floristics and structure. Human survival in bushland has a whole mythology evolving ...

, as well as a small pine plantation. The rest of the suburb is mostly farmland. Mardella's eastern boundary is the

South Western Highway South Western Highway is a highway in the South West region of Western Australia connecting Perth's southeast with Walpole. It is a part of the Highway 1 network for most of its length. It is about long. Route description Perth to Bunbury ...

, which links Perth with the

South West The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

. Part of its northern boundary is the route of a proposed extension to

Tonkin Highway Tonkin Highway is an north–south highway and partial freeway in Perth, Western Australia, linking Perth Airport and Kewdale with the city's north-eastern and south-eastern suburbs. As of April 2020, the northern terminus is at the intercha ...

.''Perth Street Directory'' (4th edition), Quality Publishing Australia (2014), pp. 340–341, 361–363.

References

{{Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale suburbs Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale

History

Geography

See also

References