Byford, Western Australia
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Byford Perth, Western Australia |
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 Byford
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| Coordinates | 32°13′19″S 116°00′04″E / 32.222°S 116.001°ECoordinates: 32°13′19″S 116°00′04″E / 32.222°S 116.001°E | ||||||||||||
| Population | 3,335 (2006 census) | ||||||||||||
| Postcode(s) | 6122 | ||||||||||||
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| LGA(s) | Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale | ||||||||||||
| State electorate(s) | Darling Range | ||||||||||||
| Federal Division(s) | Canning | ||||||||||||
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Byford is a suburb on the south-eastern edge of Perth, Australia, and has its origins in a township that was gazetted under the name 'Beenup' in 1906. 'Beenup', a corruption of the Aboriginal name associated with nearby Beenyup Brook, was the spelling that had been applied to a railway siding there. The uncorrupted form, 'Bienyup' received mention in surveyor Robert Austin's account of an expedition through the area in 1848. In 1920, the name of the township was changed to Byford.
Little has been documented of the Aboriginal occupation of the Byford area, but material traces of the district's original inhabitants have been found in numerous locations. The foothills were on the periphery of Thomas Peel's 1834 land grant and during the 1840s European settlers took up small land holdings in the area. Names of early settlers included Lazenby, Mead, and Liddelow. Mead was an enterprising farmer with numerous landholdings in the foothills between the Serpentine River and the Wongong Brook, and at East Rockingham. The district had an entirely rural population until the early part of the 20th Century.
Brickmaking contributed much to the development of Byford. Shale at Cardup had already come to the attention of colonists by the 1850s, but it was not until around the turn of the 20th century that a commercial brickmaking venture commenced at Cardup. In 1903, John Millard (a former manager of the Bunning Bros brickworks in East Perth) established The Cardup Steam Pressed Brick Company. Two years later, he entered into partnership with Atkins and Law, a rising giant in Western Australia's commercial world. With an injection of capital from Atkins and Law, the brickworks grew to become one of the state's leading producers of pressed shale brick.
A second major brickworks was set up at Beenup, north of Cardup, in 1913. This industry was a State Government initiative aimed at reducing the cost of worker housing. Like the brickworks operating at Cardup and Armadale, this one also exploited the shale deposits of the escarpment to produce high quality pressed brick and used the railway to transport the finished product to customers. The State Brickworks at Byford closed down in 1964, due in part to its operations being eclipsed by a new brickworks in Armadale. The Cardup brickworks closed in 2012, but much of the infrastructure is still extant.
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