Beeliar Regional Park

Beeliar Regional Park is a conservation park approximately south of the Perth central business district, Western Australia, located within the cities of Cockburn, Kwinana and Melville. The regional park is named after the indigenous Beeliar people of the area.
In Western Australia, regional parks consist of areas of land that have been identified as having outstanding conservation, landscape and recreation values. The park contains remnants of the Beeliar Wetlands, part of the once widespread Swan Coastal Plain.
Beeliar is one of eleven regional parks in the Perth region of Western Australia. The purpose of these regional parks is to serve as urban havens to preserve and restore cultural heritage and valuable ecosystems as well as to encourage sustainable nature-based recreation activities.

History

The concept of regional spaces in Western Australia open to the public was first proposed in 1955, when the Stephenson-Hepburn Report recommended preserving private land for future public use in what would become the Perth Metropolitan Region in 1963. The Environmental Protection Authority identified areas of significant conservation, landscape and recreation value in a report in 1983. In 1989, the State Government allocated the responsibility of managing regional parks to the Department of Conservation & Land Management.
A Regional Parks Taskforce was established in 1990 but the EPA reported in 1993 that the establishment of these parks encountered difficulties. Beeliar Regional Park was gazetted in the Government Gazette on 17 January 1995.
In the late 1990s, there was a plan to realign Cockburn Road the park. After objections from local residents the plan was scrapped.

Cultural heritage

The area of the Beeliar Regional Park, with its freshwater lakes, was an important camping area and source of food for the Beeliar clan of the Whadjuk people from the Noongar nation. A major trade route connecting the Swan and Murray River passed through the wetlands of what is now Beeliar Regional Park. A number of Aboriginal heritage sites have been identified within the park and the area continues to be of spiritual importance to the local indigenous people.
European settlement of the area was slow because large tracts of land in the area were unsuitable for farming and initial attempts to establish a town in the 1830s failed. By the 1920s, an extensive network of canals had been constructed to drain the wetlands for agricultural use.

Areas

Beeliar Regional Park stretches from its northern-most point, Blue Gum Lake, south of the CBD, to its southern extension, The Spectacles, south of the CBD. It consists of 19 lakes, arranged in two chains. The smaller, western one is within of the coast while the eastern, larger one is between from the coast. The park also contains the Henderson coastal limestone cliffs.

Eastern chain

The main areas from north to south:

Image	Name	Suburb	Description	Co-ordinates
	Blue Gum Reserve	Mount Pleasant
	Booragoon Lake	Booragoon
	Piney Lakes	Winthrop
	North Lake	North Lake
	Bibra Lake	Bibra Lake
	South Lake	Bibra Lake
	Cocos Reserve	Bibra Lake
	Little Rush Lake	Yangebup
	Yangebup Lake	Yangebup
	Kogolup Lake	Beeliar
	Branch Circus Wetland	Beeliar
	Thomsons Lake	Beeliar	Important wetland, fenced in to keep out verminHome to the endangered Southern brown bandicoot
	Banganup Lake	Wattleup	Located inside the fenced in Harry Waring Marsupial Reserve
	The Spectacles	The Spectacles	Contains an Aboriginal Heritage Trail and the Biara Boardwalk Trail, which leads to a bird hide

Western chain

The main areas from north to south:

Image	Name	Suburb	Description	Co-ordinates
	Manning Lake	Hamilton Hill Spearwood	Site of the heritage listed Azelia Ley Homestead
	Market Garden Swamp 1	Spearwood
	Market Garden Swamp 2	Lake Coogee
	Lake Coogee	Lake Coogee
	Brownman Swamps	Henderson
	Lake Mount Brown	Henderson
	Mount Brown	Henderson &Naval Base	Contains a lookout with views of the surrounding areas and Cockburn Sound
	Henderson Foreshore	Henderson &Naval Base	Contains a lookout and a short cliff top walkOffers views of Garden Island and Carnac Island