Kings Park Road
Kings Park Road is situated in West Perth, a suburb of Perth, the capital of Western Australia. It was once known as Brooking Street, and runs as a boundary between the suburbs of West Perth and Kings Park, from the west end of Malcolm Street to the corner of Bagot Road, Subiaco, and Thomas Street, West Perth.
Bitumenised in the 1930s, a setback rule was suggested in 1939 by the Perth City Council. The junction with Thomas Street and Bagot Road has been modified several times; the junction at the eastern end was regularly called the King's Park Circus. The central median strip had been lined with trees, but they were removed and replaced with rose bushes sometime after May 1949.
Edith Dircksey Cowan Memorial
The Edith Dircksey Cowan Memorial to Edith Cowan, the first female member of an Australian Parliament, stands on the roundabout at the junction of Kings Park Road, Malcolm Street and Fraser Avenue in West Perth. Before the 1950s, this place used to be the intersection of Kings Park Road, Fraser Avenue, and Mount Street. However, with the construction of the Mitchell Freeway, Mount Street was cut, Only the Barracks Arch remains, and Malcolm Street was created instead.Following the death of Edith Cowan in June 1932, a committee was formed to create a memorial to her. The committee initially wanted the memorial to be within Kings Park but the Kings Park Board refused to allow the memorial, saying that she was not a person of national significance.
The committee became aware of the Perth City Council's plans for a memorial on the Kings Park Road Circus, and when approached they agreed with the memorial being designed by Harold Boas and Henry Attwell, featuring a bronze relief designed by Margaret Johnson, with a wreath of gum leaves and nuts. This alternative location of the memorial was also of concern at the time.