Rockingham Lakes Regional Park is a conservation park approximately south 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, located within the

City of Rockingham The City of Rockingham is a council and local government area, comprising the south coastal suburbs of the Western Australian capital city of Perth. History Rockingham is located in the southern part of the traditional tribal territory of the ...

. The park, established in 1997, covers a non-continuous area of and occupies approximately 16 percent of the area of the City of Rockingham. In Western Australia, regional parks consist of areas of land that have been identified as having outstanding conservation, landscape and recreation values. The park contains remnants of the once widespread

Swan Coastal Plain The Swan Coastal Plain in Western Australia is the geographic feature which contains the Swan River as it travels west to the Indian Ocean. The coastal plain continues well beyond the boundaries of the Swan River and its tributaries, as a geol ...

and two threatened ecological communities,

Thrombolites Thrombolites (from Ancient Greek θρόμβος ''thrómbos'' meaning "clot" and λῐ́θος ''líthos'' meaning "stone") are clotted accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding, and cementation of sedimentary g ...

and Sedgelands. It provides evidence of the sea level changes over the past 7,000 years. Rockingham Lakes is one of eleven regional parks in the Perth region of Western Australia. The purpose of these regional parks is to serve as urban havens to preserve and restore cultural heritage and valuable ecosystems as well as to encourage sustainable nature-based recreation activities.

History

The concept of regional spaces in Western Australia open to the public was first proposed in 1955, when the Stephenson-Hepburn Report recommended preserving private land for future public use in what would become the

Perth Metropolitan Region 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 th ...

in 1963. The Environmental Protection Authority, EPA, identified areas of significant conservation, landscape and recreation value, in a report in 1983. In 1989, the Western Australian State Government allocated the responsibility of managing regional parks with the

Department of Conservation and Land Management The Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) was a department of the Government of Western Australia that was responsible for implementing the state's conservation and environment legislation and regulations. It was created by the ...

. A Regional Parks Taskforce was established in 1990 but the EPA reported in 1993 that the establishment of these parks encountered difficulties. In 1997, the state government announced the establishment of the Rockingham Lakes Regional Park.

Areas

Rockingham Lakes Regional Park consists of the following major areas: The park covers an area of 4,270 hectares and occupies approximately 16 percent of the area of the City of Rockingham. Most of the park is surrounded by commercial and residential land, only in the south does it border rural areas. The park is non-continuous, with Cape Peron and Lake Richmond forming an isolated north-western block and Anstey and Paganoni Swamp a separate southern part. The Port Kennedy Scientific Park and Lark Hill block is separated from Lake Cooloongup, Lake Walyungup and Tamworth Hill by a major road- and rail corridor, while smaller roads still separate the other areas.

Unexploded ordnance

Unexploded Amunition Risk Area, Lake Walyungup, August 2019

The Lake Cooloongup, Lake Walyungup, Port Kennedy Scientific Park and Lark Hill areas are potentially contaminated with unexploded ordnance, having been used as artillery range by the Department of Defence in the era around

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

References

External links

* Parks and Wildlife Service
Rockingham Lakes Regional Park
* Urban Bushland Council WA Inc.
Rockingham Lakes Regional Park

Proposed Port Kennedy and Rockingham Parks Management Framework (1997)
{{Regional parks in Western Australia 1997 establishments in Australia Parks in Perth, Western Australia