Discussion: Town of Perth

Does that make Adelaide a village?

When Geoff first moved to Adelaide from Sydney it took him 10 years to stop referring to Adl as a small country town!

I thought Adelaide was still a Settlement

Maybe I've maligned G unfairly and he actually said big country town. Hey, apparently soon the shops in Adl are going to be allowed to open before 11am on Sundays...

I still recall the days when shops in Perth weren't allowed to open before midday on Saturday and not at all on Sunday. The petrol stations were on a weekend roster system.

Hmm, actually that's probably 30 years ago now. Gee I'm old.

If I recall correctly, some of the metropolitan Perth local council areas are officially "Town of.." - only place in Australia where this is the case I think.

Bassendean, Cambridge, East Fremantle, Victoria Park, Claremont and Mosman Park according to Google (I did recall this applying to Cambridge and Vincent without having to look them up although the latter is missing from the list and appears to be a City now).

And Peppermint Grove, somewhat absurdly, is a Shire.

Not absurd, it’s tiny.

Ps glad you enjoyed a Perth!

My previous employer's company secretary lives (or lived?) in Peppermint Grove, which just goes to show how much money was being sucked out of a loss making company.

Shire, Town, City status was (is?) dictated by population in WA - it was a big deal when a Town graduated to a City, especially for the elected members who got a big pay rise! The website of the state government (DLGSCI) that looks after this stuff is worded in rather more general terms now.

Outside of WA, "shire" is normally only used for rural or semi-rural councils (sometimes not as rural as they once were, as with Cardinia on the southeast edge of Melbourne) - the only exception I can think of is Sutherland in southern Sydney (a.k.a. "The Shire").

The only Victorian local government area even close to Peppermint Grove in (lack of) size (Queenscliffe) is a Borough.

The criteria for being a city seems to be >20,000 population although Floreat and Vic Park, which have well in excess of that (and more than the Cities of Perth and Nedlands, at least in 2018) are still Towns. Subiaco on the other hand has (had) fewer than 15,000 but has still managed to acquire City status.

I always assumed with a Shire that perhaps its population was spread over too great an area to allow for it to be a city or town (Peppermint Grove being the exception but Peppy is the only metro LGA with a population of fewer than 8000 and indeed below 2000). This could well be the case for the Shire of Harvey, which has population centres all over the place but is easily in excess of the 20,000 mark. Port Hedland is the only Town outside of the metro LGAs (~15,000) although there are several City designations, all areas with populations greater than 20,000.