Safety Bay

Safety Bay is an outer southern suburb of Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, located on the coast within the City of Rockingham.

Safety Bay is an outer southern suburb of Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, located on the coast within the City of Rockingham.

Safety Bay was originally a small cove on the north shore of Warnbro Sound, now encompassed by Safety Bay Road, Berry Street and Janet Road. It had been noted by surveyor-general John Septimus Roe in 1837 as "a safe, well protected boat anchorage" and he gave it the appropriate name of Safety Bay. In the mid-1830s, Thomas Peel became interested in Safety Bay as a potential harbour to establish a base for whaling operations as well as a point from which inland stands of jarrah could be exported. After initial approval by Governor Stirling and Surveyor-General J. S. Roe for the founding of ‘Liverpool’—as Peel’s port-town was to be known—in 1842 a town site was marked out and planned by surveyor Thomas Watson. Peel’s venture did not go ahead at this time, however.

Roe recorded depths of 7 fathoms (12.8m) in what was later named "Peel Harbour". In 1846, Roe undertook a more detailed investigation of the potential of Safety Bay as the site for a port. The Harbour, however, had silted up to such an extent that it was no longer suitable for shipping and it began to become known as "Peel Basin" instead. The harbour (or basin) disappeared over time, and was last recorded on maps of the area in 1890. It has been suggested that the harbour is reforming, as evidenced by reconnection of Tern Island to the Safety Bay shore in 2001 and enclosure of the waters to the east.In the late 1920s the Safety Bay Townsite Estate was subdivided by A. J. H. Watts, and the suburb grew over the 1930s. Safety Bay Road, which links Safety Bay to Rockingham, was bitumenised and extended to Mandurah Road during World War II, through Baldivis to join the Kwinana Freeway in 2002, and the Forrest Highway in 2009.