Medina is a suburb of

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

, Western Australia, located within the

City of Kwinana The City of Kwinana is a local government area of Western Australia. It covers an area of approximately 118 square kilometres in metropolitan Perth, and lies about 38 km south of the Perth central business district, via the Kwinana F ...

. It lies 32 km south of central Perth. Medina was the first developed of the Kwinana suburbs named after ships carrying settlers to the

Swan River Colony The Swan River Colony, also known as the Swan River Settlement, or just ''Swan River'', was a British colony established in 1829 on the Swan River, in Western Australia. This initial settlement place on the Swan River was soon named Perth, an ...

in 1829 and 1830. arrived at Fremantle on 6 July 1830 with 51 passengers on board. The ship's name ''Medina'' is believed to be derived from the

River Medina The River Medina is the main river of the Isle of Wight, England, rising at St Catherine's Down near Chale, and flowing northwards through the county town Newport, Isle of Wight, Newport, towards the Solent at Cowes. The river is a navigable tid ...

on the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight (Help:IPA/English, /waɪt/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''WYTE'') is an island off the south coast of England which, together with its surrounding uninhabited islets and Skerry, skerries, is also a ceremonial county. T ...

, and was approved as a suburb name in 1953. Streets were named after passengers and crew, such as Pace Road after Captain Walter Pace, and Ridley Green, Ridley Way and Ridley Court after passenger Mary Eliza Ridley.

History

Medina is a well-established suburb, designed in the early 1950s by Perth's first female town planner, Margaret Feilman. Medina was the first of Kwinana's four 'neighbourhood units' developed to meet the housing needs of the newly established Kwinana industrial area. During the 1950s construction included Australia's largest

oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial processes, industrial process Factory, plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refining, refined into products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, Bitumen, asphalt base, ...

, operated by the

Anglo-Iranian Oil Company The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC; ) was a British company founded in 1909 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Persia (Iran). The British government purchased 51% of the company in 1914, gaining a controlling numbe ...

(later British Petroleum); the Cockburn Cement works (then owned by Rugby Portland Cement); and a

BHP BHP Group Limited, founded as the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, is an Australian multinational mining and metals corporation. BHP was established in August 1885 and is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria. As of 2024, BHP was the world� ...

blast furnace and steel-rolling mill. In 1963 Alcoa of Australia established an alumina refinery, and in 1967 the

CSBP CSBP Limited is an Australian fertiliser and chemical company based in Kwinana, Western Australia. It is a subsidiary of WesCEF, which in turn is part of the industrials division of the Wesfarmers conglomerate. Current operations CSBP produce ...

sulphuric acid and superphosphate plants were commissioned. Medina housing was typical for the State Housing Commission (now the Housing Authority) of the era. Most original houses were built with

jarrah ''Eucalyptus marginata'', commonly known as jarrah, in Noongar language and historically as Swan River mahogany, is a plant in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a tree with rough, fibro ...

weatherboard to window height, and asbestos sheeting above, with jarrah frames, floors and stumps. Most lots were or greater in size.

References

External links

{{Suburbs of Kwinana Suburbs of Perth, Western Australia Suburbs in the City of Kwinana