Rockingham

Rockingham is a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located 47 km south-south-west of the city centre.

Rockingham is a suburb ofPerth, Western Australia, located 47 km south-south-west of the city centre. It acts as the primary centre for the City of Rockingham. It has a beachside location at Mangles Bay, the southern extremity of Cockburn Sound. To its north stretches the maritime and resource-industry installations of Kwinana and Henderson. Offshore to the north-west is Australia's largest naval fleet and submarine base, Garden Island, connected to the mainland by an all-weather causeway. To the west and south lies the Shoalwater Islands Marine Park.

Rockingham received its name from the sailing ship Rockingham, one of the three vessels that Thomas Peel had chartered to carry settlers to Western Australia (the others being Gilmore and Hooghly). Rockingham arrived on 14 May 1830. Rockingham was blown ashore and eventually abandoned after failed attempts to refloat her. She eventually broke up, having sunk in shallow waters. Settlers supposedly camped near the wreck used the name "Rockingham Town" as their address.

The region had been inhabited for several thousand years by tribes of the Noongar people whose leader at that time was Galyute.Rockingham was first surveyed and lots offered for sale in 1847. However, few lots were sold until the development of a railway and jetty in 1872 to transport jarrah timber and sandalwood from Jarrahdale overseas. Rockingham prospered until the construction of the Inner Harbour of Fremantle in 1897, which caused Rockingham as a timber port to steadily decline.Another factor that contributed, albeit gradually, to the decline of the port's importance for timber export was the opening in 1893 of the South Western Railway, the line of which intersected the Jarrahdale-Rockingham line and created the possibility of trucking timber north to Fremantle or south to Bunbury where the ports were capable of taking larger ships with deeper draughts.By the turn of the century, the international timber trade was being handled by larger ships and when the timber merchants determined that they could not justify the expense of dredging to enhance access to the port of Rockingham timber exports shifted to Fremantle. After 1908 the port saw no further use for timber exports.The ending of the port coincided with the arrival of the motor car, and this new mode of transport gave impetus to the rapid development of the little coastal settlement into a seaside resort town. It was a comfortable day trip by motor car from Fremantle and Perth, and a sufficient distance from those centres for the 'travellers' to legally purchase alcoholic beverages at the Rockingham hotel on Sundays during an era when such sales were strictly regulated to protect the sanctity of that day. Holidaymakers had the use of the old port's jetties while they remained, but by 1947 they were gone, destroyed through the effects of decay and storms.From the earliest years of the 20th Century, holiday shacks were developed in the town, and by the 1970s Rockingham had also become a desirable locale for retirement villas - mostly of a modest scale.

In recent decades Rockingham has become a satellite city in Perth's southwest, together with Mandurah, and is among Australia's fastest-growing residential districts. The maritime tradition has been strengthened by steady growth of the Royal Australian Navy's main fleet base HMAS Stirling and by the development of major shipbuilding and marine support services at nearby Henderson.

Since the nineteenth century, abundant sightseeing and recreational attributes have been the basis of a tourism industry. Visitors can launch small boats or board ferries to view dolphins, seals, pelicans and penguins in the adjacent Marine Park. The coast at nearby Safety Bay is ideal for windsurfing and kitesurfing.

On 7 May 2009, a boundary realignment of Cooloongup and Hillman approved by the Minister for Lands incorporated the Rockingham Train Station into Rockingham.