Kwinana (AU)

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The City of Kwinana is a local government area of Western Australia and a city lying 15km South of Perth and North-east of Rockingham.

Kwinana is a Kimberley Aboriginal word meaning either "young woman" or "pretty maiden". The ship SS Kwinana was wrecked on Cockburn Sound in 1922 and blown onto Kwinana Beach. The nearby area acquired the name and it was officially adopted for a township in 1937. Some of its suburbs take their names from the sailing ships that first brought immigrants to Western Australia, for example, Medina, Calista and Parmelia.

The Kwinana Road District was formed out of part of Rockingham on 15 February 1954 as a result of the passage of the Kwinana Road District Act 1953. Section 4 of the Act stated that "there shall not be a duly elected Road Board for the Kwinana Road District but the Governor may, by Order in Council, appoint a fit and proper person having a comprehensive knowledge and experience of local government matters to be Commissioner of the district."

Postmarks

File:Kwinana (AU) a.jpg

Kwinana Ref Camp

The location of the Army camp appears on early maps as a pair of narrow road reserves within a Commonage or Common Reserve 1485 – a large reserve that extended roughly between Wellard Road and Anketell Road. This section of town common land was utilised by the army during WW1 and WW2, as well as the open spaces of unoccupied bushland to the east of the township, which was considered a good training ground for both men and horses. The artillery also made use of the bare sandhills around Warnbro Sound as a practice ground, and left there many unexploded shells, not retrieved until the 1980s. The Radar Detection Huts located nearby (on the south side of Wellard Road) are associated with this army camp, and it is believed that the place was a campsite for the military personnel who operated the radar surveillance site. During the 1950s and 1960s the site was occupied by a nightclub, the Ding Dong.

There are no remains of the former Army camp located on Gentle Road, which was situated on the two narrow reserves located either side of the road, near the Tasker Road intersection. This area currently consists of semi-cleared bushland which falls away to the south.

KWINANA REF. CAMP