Ellenbrook is an outer suburb and planned community in Perth, Western Australia, within the City of Swan local government area. It is north-east of Perth's central business district and north of the regional metropolitan centre of Midland. It was first developed in the 1990s as a joint venture between the Government of Western Australia and private landowners in the area.
Ellenbrook is a designated secondary activity centre within the Perth metropolitan area, serving Perth's north-eastern corridor. It forms a contiguous urban area with the adjoining communities of The Vines, Aveley and Henley Brook.
History Name The name Ellenbrook is derived from the nearby Ellen Brook waterway, which in turn was named after Ellen Stirling, the wife of Western Australia's first governor, James Stirling. The road Ellen Stirling Parade in the town centre is also named after her.
Early history and industrial use Prior to development, Ellenbrook comprised uninhabited banksia and sheoak woodlands and wetlands, which were used by transient Whadjuk Noongar people for hunting. Two remnant aboriginal artefact scatter sites were previously identified by surveyors around Gnangara Road. A camp site, DAA ID 15120 was also identified in the Lexia wetlands in the far north.
The beginning of the Swan River Colony in 1829 brought a system of land grants for pioneering settlers. The Ellenbrook area was contained within the western halves of two land grants, Swan Location 1 and Swan Location A. After 1838, with little having been done to the area, landowners George Leake and William Burges both surrendered the future western Ellenbrook portions of their grants back to the British Crown, due to the poor agricultural value of their Bassendean sands soils making any land uses uneconomical to pursue. By contrast, the areas that they retained around the river and its streams, such as Belhus, went on to become profitable farms and estates.
The area became a part of the newly-established Swan Road District local government area towards the end of the 19th century. The 20th century saw scattered industrial uses pursued in Ellenbrook, such as the Gnangara Pine Plantation, established by the state Forests Department in the early 1900s. The Gnangara Settlement, a residential townsite for forestry workers was built in the area, along with a timber mill on Weatherill Road, which is now modern day Forestview Park. Later in the 1970s, Boral leased the land around Gnangara Road to start a sand quarrying operation. Both land uses came to an end shortly before Ellenbrook's development.
The postal locality system was introduced into the area in 1972, splitting Ellenbrook across two new localities, Belhus and Upper Swan.
Joint venture formation and first village
The lands in Ellenbrook were first highlighted for metropolitan expansion in a 1987 review of the Corridor Plan for Perth by the WA State Planning Commission. By then, the Belhus half had been purchased by the WA government's State Housing Commission (Homeswest) with the intent to develop social housing. The Upper Swan half had been purchased by Japanese developer Sanwa Vines Pty Ltd as part of their project to build a golf course resort, The Vines Resort & Country Club, which officially opened to the public in 1989. It offered a 27-hole golf course, a hotel, a leisure & function complex and an attached 390-lot rural residential estate, which marked the beginning of suburban development in the Ellenbrook area.
The Department of Planning and Urban Development declared Ellenbrook a growth corridor for Perth in their 1990 'Metroplan' policy publication, prompting the land-owners in the area to commence preliminary re-zoning discussions with the Shire and various agencies of the State Government. The proposed name "Ellenbrook" was approved by the Department of Land Administration in 1990, leading to the gazettal of Ellenbrook as a suburb in 1992, out of the western parts of Belhus and Upper Swan. The new locality's boundaries included all of the lands owned by Homeswest and Sanwa, as well as The Vines estate and also the Egerton Stud estate in the south-east, which was owned by Multiplex.
Sanwa and Homeswest then formed a new joint venture company, Ellenbrook Management Pty Ltd, to coordinate planning and delivery of the new Ellenbrook townsite. The venture was a 53%-47% split between Sanwa and Homeswest respectively and controlled a combined 1,308 hectares of land in the project area. At the time, it was the biggest public-private partnership ever undertaken in Western Australia and it became a model for future suburban developments. Multiplex was also invited, but declined to join the venture.
The Environmental Protection Authority released its report on the development in mid-1992, approving the project to go ahead subject to various environmental approvals, including the requirement to surrender 450 hectares of wetlands in the north of the project area for conservation. This was reduced to 270 hectares in 1994, with the remaining amount satisfied by what is now adjacent conservation land in Melaleuca to the west. In exchange, 284 hectares of the state-owned Gnangara Plantation in the south-west was excised and granted to the joint venture for urban development.
With environmental approvals granted, preparations for infrastructure works began throughout 1994, with brand new water and sewerage headworks for the town constructed by Water Corporation, via a special agreement for the joint venture to pay back the costs of the infrastructure over the lifetime of the project. This allowed development of 'Village 1', Woodlake to begin in 1995, and the Ellenbrook suburb was declared 'open' by the State Government in September 1995. The Vines estate was subsequently excised from Ellenbrook and became its own suburb in 1996.
Ellenbrook's first primary school, Ellenbrook Primary School, opened in 1996 as a 'school in houses', with classrooms in residential houses to cater for the immediate demand of new residents. The school moved to a purpose-built facility in Woodlake in 1997, which was followed by the opening of St Helena's Catholic Primary School nearby in 1999. That same year, the first shopping centre in Ellenbrook was opened in Woodlake, offering a supermarket, chemist, bank and other community services. Residential development began to expand into Ellenbrook's second designated village, The Bridges, towards the end of the decade.
Town centre establishment and suburban expansion
The 2000s began with Sanwa's withdrawal from the Ellenbrook project, divesting their 53% stake of the joint venture to Morella Pty Ltd - a syndicate of Australian families, investors and developers, including Clough, Delfin and Milton Corporation. The syndicate was led by Danny Murphy, the outgoing Managing Director of Sanwa's Australian operations. Upon conclusion of the divestment, Murphy set up an independent land development company, LWP Property Group Pty Ltd, to take over project management and represent the syndicate's interests.
Ellenbrook's expansion continued into the early 2000s, reaching several development, town planning and population milestones. The area's first high school, the private non-denominational Ellenbrook Christian College, opened to enrolments in 2001. The new villages of Coolamon and Charlotte's Vineyard were built and released in the north, bringing in thousands of new residents, along with The Pines, Ellenbrook's first over-55s retirement village. The Town Centre precinct was built and released for commercial land uses, starting in 2004 with The Shops at Ellenbrook - the first shopping mall in the area, featuring Woolworths as its anchor tenant and first full-line supermarket. The town centre also saw Swan Hills district MP Jaye Radisich establish her electorate office there, starting a trend that subsequent MPs have since followed.
In 2006, the rural Egerton Stud area of Ellenbrook was split into the new suburb of Aveley, which owners Multiplex had begun to develop separately.
During the campaign for the 2008 Western Australian election, contenders Alan Carpenter and Colin Barnett both publicly pledged to build a new passenger rail line for Ellenbrook if elected. The 15 km line was expected to cost $850 million and be completed in 2015. However, the election winner Barnett announced in May 2010 that he had cancelled the project, declaring it uneconomical to proceed with, which attracted harsh criticism of the Liberal government.
Town Centre retail and facility expansion progressed towards the end of the decade, with The Brook Bar and Bistro tavern, the Ellenbrook Community Library and Ellenbrook Secondary College all opening on Main Street, along with the stage two expansion of The Shops at Ellenbrook which added an extra 24,000m2 of retail floor space. The final villages of Lexia and Annie's Landing in the far north were released in 2011 and 2013 respectively, followed by Lawley Private Estate - a 12 hectare pocket of land in Charlotte's Vineyard that was owned by Mt Lawley Pty Ltd and excluded from the joint venture.
Later developments
Ellenbrook's second state high school, Aveley Secondary College was opened in 2018, followed by Brooklane shopping centre adjacent to it in 2020 - both leading to the creation of the District Centre, Ellenbrook's third neighbourhood town centre for the north of the suburb. The original Town Centre area also began to be built out with townhouses, medium-density apartments and microlot houses. The Shops, by this point rebranded to Ellenbrook Central after being sold to Vicinity Centres, saw its stage 3 expansion completed in 2020, taking it to 118 tenancies across 47,000m2 of retail floor space.
The end of the 2010s saw substantial investments into public transport works for Ellenbrook. The Perth to Darwin National Highway project saw the extension of Tonkin Highway (State Route 4) to Ellenbrook, providing a full north–south freeway link and two interchanges at Gnangara Road and The Promenade at its completion in 2019. Simultaneously, the stalled Ellenbrook railway line project was revived upon the election of Mark McGowan's Labor government, with construction of the line and its accompanying town centre terminus station commencing in 2022. The line and station officially opened to the public in December 2024, connecting Ellenbrook to Perth and the rest of the Transperth rail network.
Neighbourhoods Ellenbrook's development was staged over two decades via a series of residential villages and town centres. Each village possesses its own distinct theme in housing, streetscape, landscape architecture and dwelling types.
Neighbourhood Theme First Release Area Woodlake Village Return to Nature 1995 132ha The Bridges Mediterranean 1997 87ha Coolamon Contemporary Australian 1999 146ha Morgan Fields Equestrian 2000 75ha Charlotte's Vineyard Swan Valley 2003 156ha Town Centre 2003 163ha Malvern Springs Naturaliste 2006 167ha Lexia Health 2011 35ha District Centre 2011 33ha Annie's Landing Avon Valley 2013 99ha : Morgan Fields is part of the suburb of Henley Brook, but was included in the Ellenbrook joint venture and its community master plan : Includes the Lawley Private Estate : Unrelated to the locality of the same name west of Ellenbrook
A range of different dwelling types are present across the villages, from apartments, micro-lots and townhouses to two-storey houses, large acreages and over-55s retirement housing. One of the primary town planning principles for the villages was to cater to as wide an array of ages, vocations and abilities as possible.