Elizabeth Quay


Perth's riverfront was once a place for picnics and paddling, with public baths along the water's edge. As the city grew, new development cut the connection between the river and the city, culminating in 1940 when Riverside Drive was built. Riverside Drive's connection to the Narrows Interchange in the early 1970s brought more traffic to the waterfront and made it even harder to access the foreshore on foot.

All that has changed with the development of Elizabeth Quay, the first major attempt to revitalise the city centre in decades, a project which has brought the river and the city together again. Elizabeth Quay has allowed the city to embrace one of its best natural assets - the Swan River - and provide new recreational opportunities for Perth locals and visitors. This riverside entertainment and leisure precinct has been developed along the lines of Sydney's Darling Harbour and Melbourne's Docklands precencts. At its heart is a 2.7ha artificial inlet around which 1.5kms of continuous boardwalks and promenades link public spaces as well as David Car Memorial Park and John Oldham Park, which survive in the tangle of roads that is the Narrows Interchange. A new hotel and short stay accommodation and apartments are presently under construction.

A pedestrian and cyclist bridge at the entrance to the inlet leads to an island featuring winding paths, the historic Florence Hummerston Kiosk, children's playground and views back to the city.



The development of Elizabeth Quay has included the revitalisation of the neighbouring Barrack Square jetty (above), which is well known as the place where river cruises start and finish. The redevelopment has seen Barrack Square's Union Jack-shaped layout of paths disappear, replaced by a public space in which the western end of the Barrack Square jetty is now the eastern end of Elizabeth Quay inlet. The iconic Perth Bells tower has been incorporated into the design and is looking more like it belongs there than it ever did prior to the redevelopment.



On the western side of the inlet, the Perth Convention Centre also seems more at home on the foreshore than it ever did before, and has less of the appearance of a giant waterfront warehouse that it had when it first emerged at the western end of The Esplanade.















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