North Perth

Distinguished and Famous people from North Perth

📖 Geoffrey Bolton

Geoffrey Bolton lived in North Perth through much of his childhood and early adulthood, including years in Daphne Street. Study at the University of Western Australia and Oxford led to a distinguished career as a historian, biographer and contributor to the Australian Dictionary of Biography. In Daphne Street, published in 1997, he turned the tools of history towards the community where he had grown up. Neighbours and ordinary suburban lives became the subject of a book, rather than scenery behind more famous events. The historian who interpreted national lives also found a substantial story close to his own front door.

🏛️ Nick Catania

Nick Catania moved with his family to Fitzgerald Street, North Perth, in 1954 after migrating from Sicily. He later served as member for Balcatta and as Mayor of Vincent from 2000 to 2011. His recorded childhood memories include an unauthorised swim at the newly filled Beatty Park diving pool with friends, followed by a hurried escape when the caretaker appeared. It is an unusually lively footnote to a civic career. The oral history places the later politician among the children exploring a changing neighbourhood, long before council responsibilities made pool management somebody’s serious business.

📚 Dame Alexandra Hasluck

Dame Alexandra Hasluck was born at North Perth in 1908 and developed a love of writing through school and university. Her historical work brought letters and individual lives to a wider readership, including Georgiana Molloy’s story and the experiences of convicts and their families. She continued writing during the demanding years when her husband Paul was governor-general, sometimes working into the early morning. Her own autobiography, Portrait in a Mirror, followed in 1981. North Perth is her birthplace, connecting the suburb with an author whose contribution to Western Australian history stands alongside the public role she shared with her husband.