Thornlie

Thornlie is a large residential suburb of Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, located 15 kilometres south-east of the city's central business district.

Thornlie is a large residential suburb of Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, located 15 kilometres south-east of the city's central business district. It is a part of the City of Gosnells local government area. The Canning River runs through the northern side of the suburb. Since the 1950s the suburb has developed in approximately five stages; north-east Thornlie (1950s-60s), south Thornlie (1970s-80s), Crestwood (1970s), Castle Glen (1980s) and Forest Lakes (1980s to present).

Captain Peter Pégus was the original settler of the area now known as Thornlie, which he had called "Coleraine" when granted the land in 1829.Prior to this the area would have been used by the indigenous Noongar population. In 1834 Pégus' premises and belongings were burned in a fire that was to prove the end of his settlement.The name Thornlie was derived from a farm "Thornlie Park", established in 1884 by Frank and Amy James, Amy being a niece of Walter Padbury, who financed the property.The James family subsequently sold the estate, which had been a productive dairy farm, in 1937 to the mine-manager and investor, Nat Harper. When Harper died in 1954, the 694-hectare (1,715-acre) Thornlie estate was put up for auction in two lots. 92 hectares (228 acres) of Lot 1 were purchased by D. and M. O'Sullivan, and by June 1956 the Gosnells Roads Board had provided approval for the development of the area. By March 1957 forty houses had been completed, and by May 1958 there were 100 occupied homes. Thornlie was thus established as a residential suburb in the late 1950s as a housing estate aimed mainly at middle-income earners and inner city dwellers.The first homes in the area included a section ofresidences constructed in the 1950s and early 1960s, to the north of the intersection of Thornlie Avenue and Spencer Road, and residences to the south of Thornlie Avenue between Spencer Road and the Canning River, constructed in the 1960s and 1970s. During this time Thornlie's development was aimed at inner city dwellers who might want to live in a more spacious semi-urban-rural setting. It is one reason why Thornlie has typically large blocks of 700-900sqm and is often described as one of Perth's leafy suburbs.

The more upmarket Crestwood Estate, which was an experiment in providing fully integrated facilities and services to home-owners, was established from the early 1970s in the southern part of Thornlie, an experiment that was rarely replicated in later Perth subdivisions.From the 1980s the newer Castle Glen and Forest Lakes housing estates, which were at that time to some extent in competition with one another for land purchasers, were established in the remaining land in the western and south-western portions of Thornlie.. The focus of these developments was on providing affordable housing for new home buyers, generally young families.

Some semi-rural land in the western portion, mainly utilised for horse agistment and chicken-farming, was developed in the early 2000s. At one time there were several industrial activities taking place in the north-western portion. The last of these to close, about 2004, was the Inghams chicken-processing factory, the site of which was redeveloped for a residential estate.