Perthਪਰਥ

Perth is the capital of Western Australia and Australia's fourth most populous city, spread across the Swan Coastal Plain between the Indian Ocean and the Darling Scarp, with 2,116,649 people in Greater Perth in the 2021 census. Its Punjabi community is the west coast centre of Punjabi Australia: 19,947 people used Punjabi at home in Greater Perth in 2021, almost all of Western Australia's Punjabi speakers, anchored by the gurdwara at Canning Vale in the city's south east.

Where is Perth, and why do Punjabis live there?

Perth stands on the Swan River, on the traditional lands of the Whadjuk Noongar people, who know the place as Boorloo. Captain James Stirling founded it on 4 June 1829 as the administrative centre of the Swan River Colony, and it was named after Perth in Scotland. It was proclaimed a city by Queen Victoria in 1856. The metropolitan area runs along the coastal plain from the ocean beaches to the Darling Scarp, with the port of Fremantle at the river mouth and Kings Park, one of the world's largest inner city parks, above the centre. A series of mining booms in Western Australia's regions made Perth the headquarters city for the state's mining industry, and it became Australia's fourth most populous city in 1984.

Sikhs have been part of Western Australia since the 1800s, arriving as cameleers on the expeditions that opened up the interior and later working as hawkers and pedlars across the state. The modern Punjabi community is a product of Perth's long growth as a mining and migration capital: work, study and family drew skilled migrants, students and professionals to a fast growing city with room to settle, most of them in the newer suburbs of the south east and north. A 1999 Western Australian government statement already described Sikh migrants arriving from India, South East Asia, the United Kingdom and Fiji, and working in medicine, engineering, science and teaching. Perth closes the west coast of this series' map of Punjabi places in Australia, after Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

What do the numbers say?

Greater Perth counted 2,116,649 people in the 2021 census, with a median age of 37. Punjabi was used at home by 19,947 of them, 0.9 per cent, the fourth most used language other than English after Mandarin at 49,624, Italian at 23,177 and Vietnamese at 21,699, and ahead of Cantonese at 19,171. Across Western Australia as a whole, 20,613 people used Punjabi at home, so almost every Punjabi speaker in the state lives in Greater Perth. India was one of the city's largest countries of birth, with 58,229 residents, 2.8 per cent of Greater Perth, born in India.

For religion, the census tables opened for this entry publish Greater Perth's largest affiliations only, and Sikhism does not appear among them, so no citywide Sikh total is invented here. Across Western Australia, census based tables counted 18,583 Sikhs in 2021, 0.7 per cent of the state. The regional tables show where the community lives: in the Perth South East region, Punjabi was used at home by 10,214 people, 1.9 per cent, the second most used language other than English after Mandarin, which is more than half of Greater Perth's Punjabi speakers in one region. In the suburb of Canning Vale itself, 1,241 people used Punjabi at home, 3.6 per cent, and 3,018 residents, 8.7 per cent, were born in India.

Canning Vale and the south east

Punjabi Perth is centred on the south east. Around Canning Vale, where the Sikh Association of Western Australia built the state's best known gurdwara, Punjabi families settled in the planned suburbs built from the 1990s onward, close to the temple, its Punjabi school and the shops and services of the Nicholson Road corridor. From there the community spreads through the south eastern suburbs and into the newer estates of the city's north, where later arrivals have bought into Perth's growth corridors. The pattern is the Australian one seen in Melbourne and Sydney: the gurdwara came first as the anchor, and housing, businesses and family networks grew around it.

Gurdwaras, the Sikh Association and the heritage trail

The Gurdwara Sahib at 280 Shreeve Road in Canning Vale is run by the Sikh Association of Western Australia, which was founded in 1975. The state government laid the temple's foundation stone on 14 April 1999, on the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Khalsa, after the community bought a 2.3 hectare block, and the completed temple was opened on 4 March 2001, the culmination of six years of planning. The association's complex was planned from the start as more than a prayer hall, with a community hall and a Punjabi school. The 2015 interpretation plan for the Western Australian Sikh story names three Perth gurdwaras, at Canning Vale, Bayswater and Bennett Springs. At Bennett Springs, Sikh Gurdwara Perth holds weekly Sunday services open to all, runs a Punjabi school teaching Gurmukhi language and Sikh history, and supports new migrants and overseas students with shelter, food, accommodation and work. Perth also holds the Australian Sikh Heritage Trail in Adenia Park at Riverton, opened on 17 April 2018 beside the heritage listed Sikh cremation site on the Canning River, where interpretive signs tell the stories of Sikh farmers, wrestlers, Anzacs, hawkers and entrepreneurs.

Perth is Australia's western capital, the most isolated big city in this series, and its Punjabi community carries a long local history: cameleers and hawkers in the 1800s, a heritage trail on the Canning River, and a census counted heartland in the south east around Canning Vale. For the full map, see Punjabi places in Australia.