View of East Perth from St Anne’s Hospital in Mount Lawley, 1970 (State Library of Western Australia)
From was early as the 1850s, East Perth and Claisebrook in particular was a site for various noxious industries including an abbatoir, a brickyard and a tannery. The building of the railway in the late 1880s and 1890s spurred industrial development in East Perth. Over the next half century, the area developed to include timber yards, brickworks, a tram and loco depot and all kinds of factories alongside smaller businesses like dressmakers and commercial laundries. The East Perth Power Station, which operated from 1916 to 1981, was a key industrial site in the area. While many factories and businesses were moving to bigger industrial sites on Perth’s outskirts by the 1960s and ‘70s, storytellers still remember many factories and workshops where lived and worked.
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Gordon Cole
Brenda Woods
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Aerial photo of the East Perth Gasworks 1950 (State Library of Western Australia)
Peter's Ice Cream delivery trucks in East Perth, 1950s (State Library of Western Australia)
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