Leederville

[6007]

31°
93’
60”S115°
83’
40”E

Leederville is about 5km north of Perth city. It’s named after William Leeder, the area’s first landowner who arrived on the ship ‘Rockingham’ in 1830. In 1833 he bought land near Lake Monger. By 1838 Leeder had established the Leeder Hotel in Perth – now known as The Leederville Hotel, which is the building you can see below with the star on top. It marks the centre of the main strip and they even named their new front bar ‘Bill’s Bar’.

Another Leedy landmark is the Luna Palace Cinema, which you can see below – an art deco gem for Perth and a cinema that shows great independent films, respect. Kailis Bros Fish Market is well-renowned too, founded by a prominent local Greek family. Kailis even invented ‘fish and chip’ ice-cream [read here], haha. The Japanese in the arcade is out-freakin-standing + Tom’s Cafe does great coffee [Tom is a real character]. I get my camera + other gear from Leederville Camera House – ask for Lidio, he’ll help you out.

> Leederville is a great little ‘urban village’ – mainly centred around Vincent and Oxford streets – which has avoided gentrification for an impressive amount of time, considering Perth’s recent boom. It’s gritty, has some soul and is pretty active, a definite Perth hub. There’s plenty of cafes, a few good pubs, a couple of clubs, plenty of restaurants, some great boutiques + shops. Leederville offers a real a slice of inner city Perth life. In mid December the local network – ‘Leederville Connect’ – organise the Light Up Leederville Carnival, check it out, it’s amazing! There’s a cute Farmer’s Market every Sunday morning in the town centre.The suburb itself is outstanding – so many beautiful old heritage homes and some stunning new developments – a great mix of of residential housing styles. There’s a tension [in all of Perth’s inner city suburbs] between developers who want to knock down the old houses and build multi-unit dwellings > versus those that want to keep heritage properties in tact, maintain the streetscape and character and stop their streets getting crowded out by heaps of cars. It’s tough – as the state government has housings quotas for these inner city areas that they have to fill [they want more bodies to be able to live near the city]. You can see the results of this battle throughout Leederville – old places right next to new ones, etc. I like the mix, very cool.

There’s about 3,000 people in Leederville and the average age is 33. About 20% of households speak more than one language at home; other languages include Italian, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese and French. The median family income is $2,567 – pretty high as the WA average is $1,722. 50% od dwellings are separate houses – the rest is split equally between semi-detached (like a townhouse) and units/apartments. 82% of dwellings have 2 or 3 bedrooms.

> You’ll see some town centre shots below, then we’ll move into the suburb itself… probably my biggest gallery – so many great houses! Love the ice cream spilling on the dad’s head in the shot just below too!