Boorloo Heritage Festival
shines a light on Noongar
stories of East Perth
Vanessa Baxter, General Manager - Strategic Partnerships
From the Coolbaroo Club dances and Miller’s Cave to the Starlight Hotel, and places that once lined the river’s edge. Elders’ memories are helping ensure St Bart’s plans for the future respect and honour Aboriginal culture and heritage.
In April, the Lotterywest Boorloo Heritage Festival offered a powerful reminder that heritage is not only buildings and dates, but also people, memory and Country. For St Bart’s, it was also an opportunity to support truth-telling about Aboriginal life in East Perth, on Whadjuk Noongar boodja, and to celebrate the strength of community connection that continues today.
A highlight was Noongar Stories of East Perth at Perth City Farm: a morning of talks and storytelling followed by a guided tour on a vintage bus. Presented in collaboration with the City of Perth and Moorditj Footprints, the event also brought together the State Library of WA’s Storylines team, City Farm, and the
Bus Preservation Society of WA. A shared effort to collect, protect and share stories that have long been carried quietly in families.
Over the last few years, St Bart’s has been yarning with Aboriginal Elders who grew up in and around East Perth. Their recollections sketch a rich social map of the neighbourhood in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, during a time when Aboriginal people were prohibited from entering the city, yet still found ways to gather, care for one another and create joy.
Elders spoke of Friday night dances at the Coolbaroo Club, an Aboriginal-led space for music and community at a time when many venues were closed to them. They also pointed to everyday places that mattered: old houses and shopfronts now gone; factories and workplaces such as the Power Station and Millers Timber; and camping places such as the Starlight Hotel (under the stars by the river) where families could stay close to each other when safe housing was out of reach.
Listening is also shaping what comes next. As St Bart’s continues planning and improving our East Perth sites, we are guided by Noongar culture through structured engagement, including an Aboriginal Reference Group to help ensure our spaces and services are culturally safe, welcoming and grounded in Country and community.
Elders spoke warmly of St Bart’s in earlier decades. One shared that he had been a resident for a time when he was “off the rails”. Another, remembered dropping in “to yarn with the old fellas.” She recalled: “St Bart’s was a pretty good place; it wasn’t that big and a lot has been added to it over time… they let people stay there”.
What stays with you, listening to these yarns, is the way Elders speak of belonging, family and being together against the pressures of the outside world. Lives were shaped by hardship and survival, yet the memories that surface most readily are often the ones full of laughter, music, resourcefulness and looking after each other.
That resilience is part of East Perth’s living history. The Boorloo Heritage Festival created space for these stories to be heard, not as nostalgia, but as truth-telling that helps all of us understand the city differently and act differently.
We’re proud to be part of work that honours culture, strengthens connection, and keeps the stories of Boorloo alive for the next generation.
