Yokine
In 1885 when Charles Pott and Richard Sherwood drove out of Perth one August day in their buggy seeking some elevated land to purchase, their dream of creating a golf course began. They wended their way to Native Dog Swamp, along Wanneroo Road to what is now the suburb of Tuart Hill. There they turned east and travelled through the bush until they came to the wooded slopes of Yokine Hill, named after the aboriginal word for wild or native dog.
The two decided they would buy an area of approximately 110 acres and duly received their land title, dated October 1885. In 1927, Richard Hesford purchased the property and transferred the land to The Western Australian Golf Club Limited, together with some additional land, making an area of about 182 acres. This newly formed Company set apart approximately 105 acres for a golf course and subdivided the balance into 212 building blocks facing parts of the course. These they offered for one hundred and fifty pounds. The golf course was to be the bait to attract buyers. The company then rented the licensed portion of the clubhouse to The Western Australian Golf Club Incorporated for two hundred pounds per annum when it was incorporated in 1928. Spectacular views abound from the 12 th tee in Swan Street, which is the highest point on the Swan coastal plain.
The boom years for Yokine came after World War II when land on both sides of Flinders Street was subdivided, sold and built on. The subdivisions at the top of Yokine Hill became known as Mt Yokine, the lower slopes, towards Dog Swamp, is known as Yokine.
Golf Course Reserve, Hayes Avenue
The early European history of the locality dates back to January 1832, when the sale of unoccupied Crown Lands by auction was introduced, with the northern half of the Perth Shire location allocated to T.R.C. Walters on the 10th March 1840. Yokine was part of this allocation, which was originally referred to as Osborne Park, and later as part of Tuart Hill. This name, adopted through common usage, was derived from the groves of Tuart trees on the rise above Dog Swamp, adjacent to Wanneroo Road. The hill situated on Williams Road was named by N.S. Bartlett in 1922 as Yokine Hill, where the trig station was sited. Trig points (also known as a Trigonometric Stations) were valuable to early surveyors, providing reference points for measuring distance and direction, and assisting in the creation of maps.
The Metropolitan Water Board built a reservoir on top of the hill in 1950, with a water tower to boost water pressure in the delivery of water to homes that that were planned fopr the area. After the reservoir the virgin bushland around it was resumed for the State Housing Commission. Channel Seven was the first television station established in Western Australia, and it was its inaugural general manager (Sir) James Cruthers, who selected Mount Yokine as the studio site, which was deemed to be part of Tuart Hill. At that time WA Newspapers negotiated with the Labor Government of the day to purchase the 8 hectares (80,000 square metres) on which the Channel 7 television studios were built.
As its name suggests, the lake and surrounding rushes of this waterbird refuge was originally marshy ground where local Aboriginal groups used to camp. This little swamp, situated behind Dog Swamp Shopping Centre near the intersections of Wanneroo Road with Walcott Street and Flinders Street, sits at the foot of Tuart Hill and Yokine Hill. The names of Dog Swamp and the suburbs of Yokine and Mt Yokine have a common origin - Yokine in the local Aboriginal dialect means 'native dog', and Dog Swamp was originally referred to as Native Dog Swamp.
The swamp was tidied up in 1969, the lake was created and the area around it landscaped. Some years later this parkland became home to The Land of Make Believe, a novel series of small buildings based on fairytales. It was a built by HL Brisbane and Wunderlich brick and roofing tile manufacturer out of building materials manufactured by the company. There was Old King Cole's castle, the three little pigs' houses, Cinderella'shouse with resident guinea pigs, and a stork carrying a baby. All that is left is Old King Cole's castle, once the entrance of Make Believe Land, which is now in a state of disrepair through vandalism.
Tuart Hill College
Tuart Hill began to be deveoped as an outer suburb of Perth on the road north to Wanneroo around the turn of the 20th century. In 1914 the name of Grenville was proposed as a name for the suburb by the Grenville Progress Association, but it was not accepted due to its likeness to Granville in New South Wales. Tuart Hill was eventually named after the Tuart tree (Eucalyptus gomphocephala) that once grew extensively throughout the area, especially on the rise beyond Dog Swamp through which Wanneroo Road passed. Since 1914, the Osborne Park Agricultural Society has held its annual show at Robinson Reserve in Tuart Hill. The show is usually held around the first weekend in December on Friday and Saturday and features displays of local produce, animals and livestock, carnival attractions and fireworks.
Tuart College is a Senior College run by the Western Australian Education Department, offering a number of courses such as a Year 12 TEE Program for students wanting to enter tertiary education, adult learning classes, or English language courses. The building was formerly Tuart Hill Senior High School which opened in 1956 to cater for the growing number of Baby Boomer children whose families had moved into the surrounding area and to the north in the 1950s. It was converted to Tuart College in 1981.
Perth's three commercial televisions were all established in a media precinct set on about 25 hectares of land which was set aside for that purpose by the Western Ausralian Government in the 1950s. The precinct also takes in about five hectares of protected bushland in a Bushforever site.
As Yokine Hill was the highest point in the Perth metropolitan area, the Dianella side of the hill to the east of Mt Yokine Reservoir was the ideal place to establish the precinct, though none of the stations broacast their signals from the site. At that time, that part of Yokine Hill was deemed to be part of Tuart Hill. The eastern boundary of that suburb lies to the immediate west of Mount Yokine Reservoir.
TVW Channel 7 studio building when it opened in 1959 (Channel 7 Perth)
On 13th October 1958, the first commercial television license in Perth was granted by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to TVW Limited, a subsidiary of West Australia Newspapers (WAN), publisher of Perth's daily newspaper, The West Australian.
The then Governor of Western Australia, Sir Charles Gairdner opened the station at 7.30pm on 16th October 1959. Some of the first programs included Leave It to Beaver, Sea Hunt, Father Knows Best, Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, The Epilogue and a local show called Spotlight which featured Rolf Harris.
The station's signal was originally broadcast from the Applecross Wireless Station. 1988 also saw the station change hands when the Christopher Skase led Qintex group purchased the station. Qintex collapsed a year later, leaving TVW in the hands of receivers. In 1991 the network was floated on the stock exchange and by 1995 Perth-born Kerry Stokes was in charge of both TVW and the rest of the network. Since then, the station has continued to enjoy a dominant share of television ratings in the Perth market.
TVW-7 did not have a rival commercial television station until 1965. Swan Television's STW-9 commenced broadcasting on 12th June 1965. STW also established its studios on Yokine Hill in Dianella, a short distance from the Channel 7 studios. STW broadcasts with a transmitter mast located in Walliston. It became the first station in Perth to broadcast 24 hours a day on 17 April 1984. In the late 1980s, the station came under the ownership of Bond Media, owned by businessman Alan Bond, and became a Nine Network owned and operated station when Bond purchased the network. In recent years, STW-9 has also produced and broadcast local news, current affairs and feature programming from its Dianella studios.
Aerial view of Network Ten's studios in Cottonwood Crescent, Dianella
Perth's third commercial television station, the Nine Network's NEW-10, commenced broadcasting on 20 May 1988, making Perth the last of the capital cities to get full network service. By this time, the Network had been scaled back considerably and was little more than a low-cost relay of network programming from Sydney, without the local content that had been originally intended. NEW-10's broadcasting station was also established at Dianella not far from the other two commercial television stations. NEW-10 today broascasts in digital television on VHF Channel 11 from Carmel, located in the Perth Hills. Ten Perth shows exactly the same as Ten's national feed, with the exception of news and the occasional local programs. NEW-10 produces a 60-minute local news program on weeknights from its Dianella studios alongside national news output from Network Ten's Sydney studios in Pyrmont.
In 2014, Channel Seven had its land rezoned for residential purposes, and was the first of the three television stations to finalise its plans to move from the Dianella media precinct. The former Channel 7 site was released as a housing estate called Seven Hills in 2016. It was the first of the three television station sites to be released as an estate to the general public. Located on Gay Street, Dianella, Seven Hills consists of 7.29 hectares with 7000sq m of public open space and 6,500sq m of bush forever conservation land. The name Seven Hills pays homage to the former use of the site, in a location commonly referred to as 'Media Hill'. The logo for Seven Hills is inspired by the former Channel 7 test pattern.
The suburb of Dianella, built on the eastern slopes of Yokine Hill, was named after the botanical title of a small blue lily, Dianella revoluta, which is a narrow-leafed plant which was plentiful in the area prior to residential development. Dianella is Perth and Western Australia's media centre; all three of Perth's major commercial television stations are based there.
Dianella Plaza Stage 1 opening, August 1968
Early development of the area was slow, as the sandy soil, part of the Banksia sandplain, was considered unsuitable for agriculture. Much of Dianella was subdivided in the 1880s by the Intercolonial Investment Company of Sydney, but growth was still slow and by 1919, the only development was along Walter Road, a track leading to dairy farms in the Morley area. Dianella comprised localities known as North Inglewood, East Yokine, Morley Park and Bedford Park. They were amalgamated into Dianella in 1958, which generated some growth.
Development progressed during the 1960s and housing construction first occurred north from Walter Road and Grand Promenade, with St Andrews, Montclair Rise and Dress Circle Estates being the last major areas to be developed in the early 2000s. The character of housing ranges from modest post-war homes to large, modern two storey dwellings.
Dianella lies at the heart of Perth's small Jewish community. Although this is the third largest Jewish community in Australia, numbers have never reached more than 6000 members (the most recent Australian census put Western Australia's entire Jewish community at 5,300 members). Dianella itself is home to a number of community institutions such as a Jewish day school (Carmel), a sports club, an Aged Home (Maurice Zeffert Home) and a small Synagogue known as "Dianella Shule."
A number of streets in the region are named after Jewish icons such as Menora, Maccabean and Golda Meir. Despite a small but steady stream of Jewish immigration from South Africa, the community in Dianella and surrounding suburbs is shrinking as many young people leave Perth, mainly heading to the larger Australian Jewish communities in Melbourne and Sydney.
Dianella is also part of Perth's small Greek community, the second biggest hub for the Greek Orthodox Community in Perth, the biggest being in the centre of Northbridge. During the early 1990s, the Greek community of Perth wanted a Greek Orthodox College so that children of Greek origin can learn the Greek language and to be engaged in the Greek culture, while going to school.
Today, there is a Greek day school (St Andrews Grammar) which is located in the St Andrews Land Estate and a small Greek Orthodox Church (Agios Nectarios) located in the northern sector of the suburb just next to the Dress Circle Land Estate. Next to the Greek Orthodox College there is a Greek retirement home (Hellenic Community Aged Care). Some streets in the northern sector of the suburb have names of Greek origin such as Hellenic Drive in the St Andrews Land Estate.
