Bedford

Bedford is a suburb 6 kilometres (4 mi) north-east of the central business district (CBD) of Perth, the capital of Western Australia.

Bedford is a suburb 6 kilometres (4 mi) north-east of the central business district (CBD) of Perth, the capital of Western Australia. Named after Frederick Bedford, the Governor of Western Australia from 1903 to 1909, the suburb is within the City of Bayswater local government area. It is predominantly a low density residential suburb consisting of single-family detached homes, with clusters of commercial buildings along Beaufort Street, Grand Promenade and Walter Road.

Before European settlement, the area was inhabited by the Mooro group of the Whadjuk Noongar people. The first major developments for the suburb occurred in the 1920s, when the extension of Beaufort Street and its associated tram service into the area triggered housing construction. Bedford Park was gazetted as a townsite in 1937, and major growth occurred following World War II, due to developments by the State Housing Commission. Today, Bedford is fully suburbanised.

Major roads that travel through or along the edge of the suburb are Beaufort Street, Coode Street, Grand Promenade and Walter Road. Major parks include Beaufort Park, RA Cook Reserve and Grand Promenade Reserve, which are used for various sports including Australian rules football, cricket and soccer.

Before European settlement, the area was inhabited by the Mooro group of the Whadjuk Noongar people. The Mooro group were led by Yellagonga, and inhabited the area north of the Swan River, as far east as Ellen Brook and north to Moore River. The Swan River provided fresh water and food, as well as being a place for trade.

When Europeans founded the Swan River Colony in 1829, they did not recognise the indigenous ownership of the land. Land along the Swan River was surveyed by John Septimus Roe, the colony's Surveyor General. The survey resulted in the land being divided into long, narrow rectangular strips extending from the river. As the river was the only method of transportation in the early years of the colony, each piece of land had to have river frontage. The long, narrow strips were called "ribbon grants", however the term "grant" was misleading, as the grantees had a requirement that they make improvements to the land granted to them within 10 years, or be forced to forfeit the land. In 1830, the colonists travelled up the river to the land allotted to them. The colonists were disappointed to discover that most of the area inland was unsuitable for European agriculture, being sand dunes interspersed with swampland. Most of these colonists either died or left the area soon after, and none of them settled in the present day Bedford, far away from the Swan River.

In the 1920s, Beaufort Street was extended through to Salisbury Street, and then Coode Street. The Beaufort Street tram was extended as far as Salisbury Street. Gold Estates of Australia Pty Ltd, a gold prospecting company that had turned to real estate, bought the land near Beaufort Street that was part of Location W, and subdivided it for residential purposes. This generated the first major development in Bedford Park, which was at the time just an extension of Inglewood into the Bayswater Road District. Some of the houses developed in the 1920s still remain along Rosebery Street and Salisbury Street.

On 18 June 1937, the townsite of Bedford Park was gazetted, named after Frederick Bedford, the Governor of Western Australia between 1903 and 1909. It consisted of 53 hectares (130 acres) of land centred on the intersection of Beaufort Street and Grand Promenade. The Beaufort Street tram terminated at Salisbury Street, on the edge of the townsite. During World War II, the tram was extended to Grand Promenade, as one of the final extensions to Perth's tramway system.Following World War II, there was a severe shortage of housing in Perth. The State Housing Commission bought large areas of land in Bedford. The first public housing estate built in Bedford was between Walter Road and Craven Street.

The West Australian commended the housing commission in successfully creating houses that were varied in design:

...(The State Housing Commission has) despite mass development, skilfully avoided any appearance of monotony in design. All the homes are on wide fronted, deep blocks and all are basically the same inside in that they have the same number of rooms and the same facilities. There all similarity ceases. By switching the entrances from one side of the house to the other, or by placing them in the middle, by running gables at different angles and by general architectural modifications, complete dissimilarity has been achieved.

By 1948, the population in the northern side of Bedford Park was large enough for shops to be needed. The State Housing Commission was initially unsure of whether its job was to provide shops, or whether it was appropriate. It was decided that the housing commission did need to build shops, and so the shops along Grand Promenade are the first in Perth to be built using taxpayer money.

On 20 December 1968, the trolleybuses to Bedford were closed. By the early 1970s, major development of Bedford was complete, the last road being Gummery Street in the suburb's north.

In September 2018, 24 year-old Anthony Robert Harvey was arrested for the murder of his family of five in a house on Coode Street. Harvey was charged with murdering his three daughters, all under the age of four, his wife, and his mother-in-law. Harvey murdered his children and wife on 3 September 2018. The next morning, he murdered his mother-in-law. Police found that no firearms were used; instead "blunt objects" and knives were used. Harvey's case came before Justice Stephen Hall in the Supreme Court of Western Australia, where he became the first Western Australian in history to be sentenced to life in prison with no option for release. ABC News reported this event to be the "third mass murder" for a domestic household of 2018, claiming that Bedford and metropolitan Perth were in a "domestic violence crisis". The house was demolished in May 2021.