Kalamunda, Western Australia
Encyclopedia
Transport
Kalamunda Road
Kalamunda Road is a minor arterial road linking the historic suburb of South Guildford with the Darling Scarp town of Kalamunda, in Perth, Western Australia....
serves as a major access road for Perth Airport
Perth Airport
Perth Airport is an Australian domestic and international airport serving Perth, the capital and largest city of Western Australia. The airport itself is located in the suburb of Perth Airport....
, and provides the foothills suburbs with access to the Perth central business district.
The suburb is serviced by the Kalamunda bus station, which provides bus services across the Perth metropolitan area.
Kalamunda was once part of a thriving logging region, being a stopping place on the Upper Darling Range Railway. The area has a number of features as a result of this railway including a museum at the site of the original station. Typical rail side road structures with a rail reserve between and the Zig-zag
Zig Zag (railway)
A railway zig zag, also called a switchback, is a way of climbing hills in difficult country with a minimal need for tunnels and heavy earthworks. For a short distance , the direction of travel is reversed, before the original direction is resumed.A location on railways constructed e.g...
road on the old section where the railway climbed the Darling escarpment. It is at Gooseberry Hill that the railway used to descend from the hills to Midland Junction, dropping 300 metres in a series of 5 zig-zag shunts. The railway line has been replaced by a single lane, one-way scenic drive that follows the old track.
Facilities
Kalamunda has extensive areas with orchards, primarily involved in apple and stone fruitStone fruits
Stone fruits , in botany, refers to drupe, fruits in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a shell of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries...
production. The region largely serves as a dormitory
Dormitory
A dormitory, often shortened to dorm, in the United States is a residence hall consisting of sleeping quarters or entire buildings primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people, often boarding school, college or university students...
suburb for Perth workers. It has a modest retail
Retail
Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...
, government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
and education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
sector, and a small industrial
Industry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...
base. While the town's retail centre is the largest in the Darling Scarp it primarily services Kalamunda and the contiguous urbanised areas of Lesmurdie
Lesmurdie, Western Australia
Lesmurdie is a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located within the Shire of Kalamunda.It is viewed as being a rival suburb to the neighbouring suburb of Kalamunda directly to the north. The main access to the suburb from the Swan Coastal Plain is via Welshpool Road, that snakes its way up the...
and Walliston
Walliston, Western Australia
Walliston is a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located within the Shire of Kalamunda.Prior to 1949 it was a stopping place on the Upper Darling Range Railway. It was named after John and Emma Wallis, the area's first settlers who arrived in the 1880s...
.
Kalamunda and the surrounding areas have an art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
s and craft
Craft
A craft is a branch of a profession that requires some particular kind of skilled work. In historical sense, particularly as pertinent to the Medieval history and earlier, the term is usually applied towards people occupied in small-scale production of goods.-Development from the past until...
s tradition, and are home to three major Perth residential colleges. Conservation groups are active within the community, and efforts have been made (largely successfully) to maintain native vegetation adjacent to the urban areas, and to some extent with the urban area.
Kalamunda is home to the television towers of all free-to-air Perth Television stations, and the approach control radar for Perth Airport
Perth Airport
Perth Airport is an Australian domestic and international airport serving Perth, the capital and largest city of Western Australia. The airport itself is located in the suburb of Perth Airport....
.
Demographics
The population profile of Kalamunda is slightly in advance of the Perth Metropolitan area, and it is likely that in time it will develop a large retirement population. The population of Kalamunda and the surrounding areas have a diverse ethnicity. Notably however, there are many Italian families who became involved in the orchardOrchard
An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit or nut-producing trees which are grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive...
industry in the post-Second World War migration period.
Despite the steady encroach of the urban sprawl in recent times which has eroded the sense of a 'regional centre', Kalamunda remains a quiet town amongst the jarrah forests on the Darling Scarp
Darling Scarp
The Darling Scarp, also referred to as the Darling Range or Darling Ranges, is a low escarpment running north-south to the east of the Swan Coastal Plain and Perth, Western Australia...
.
Short stay accommodation in a forest setting close to Perth is a growth area, and is increasingly offering eco-tourism experience for local and overseas visitors.
See also
- Shire of KalamundaShire of KalamundaThe Shire of Kalamunda is a Local Government Area in the eastern suburbs of the Western Australian capital city of Perth, located about east of Perth's central business district. The Shire covers an area of , much of which is state forest rising into the Darling Scarp to the east...
- Kalamunda National ParkKalamunda National ParkKalamunda National Park is a national park in Western Australia , east of Perth, near the town of Kalamunda.-Description:The park is composed of typical Darling Scarp woodland including species of Marri, Jarrah and Wandoo with a diverse understorey including a range of wildflowers.Piesse Brook...
- Gooseberry Hill, Western AustraliaGooseberry Hill, Western AustraliaGooseberry Hill is a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located within the Shire of Kalamunda. It is the site of Gooseberry Hill National Park....