Best 34 Real Estate Agents In Australind [2025]

Australind Suburb Overview

Australind is a satellite town and outer northern suburb of Bunbury, Western Australia, and is located 12 km north-east of Bunbury’s central business district. Its Local Government Area is the Shire of Harvey. At the 2006 census, Australind had a population of 8,717.

Prior to European settlement, the area was home to the Wardandi people. Early explorers found them to be timid and settlers found them excellent trackers, and many of them found employment on farms. The first sighting of the coast was by Captain A.P. Jonk in the VOC Emeloort, who sighted land at 33

The name Australind is a combination of Australia and India, which was chosen due to the belief that the area could be used for breeding horses for the British Indian Army, as was later achieved in Cervantes, Northampton and Madura. In 1841, the Western Australian Land Company purchased 103,000 acres of land in 1841 with a plan to create an English-style village populated by settlers. The area had been mapped in 1831 by John Septimus Roe and explored by land by Lieutenant Henry Bunbury in 1836. A detailed plan of the town included a town square, church, a school, stores, a mill and a public hall, and Marshall Clifton, who arrived on the Parkfield in 1841, was appointed leader of the 440 settlers.

Within barely two years, however, the settlement was abandoned due largely to the poor soils and climate – no water in summer and too much of it in winter – and the settlers drifted away. Little of the planned town was ever developed. The company folded and the land was mostly resumed by the Crown, and the settlement plans were abandoned officially in 1875. The Parkfield name lives on in a nearby rural locality and in a primary school in northern Australind.

A handful of historic buildings, including St Nicholas Church and Henton Cottage on Paris Road, and Clifton’s former residence Upton House on Old Coast Road, still exist in the town. St Nicholas Church, originally a worker’s cottage, is 3.6 metres in width and 8.2 metres in length, and is believed to be the smallest church in Australia, while Henton Cottage was the town’s first hotel.

In the 1860s, Australind was the most significant town in the Harvey-Brunswick region, and contained a school, post office and store. Additionally, a bridge had been built over the Brunswick River to allow nearby settlers to make use of the town’s services. However, the town did not grow – in the 1890s, the construction of the Perth to Bunbury railway via Pinjarra shifted the focus of development to agricultural and timber towns further inland.

The population of the town was 33 in 1898. Even as late as the 1971 Census, just 418 people lived in the Australind area.

Some early signs of development included the Bunbury Golf Course at Clifton Park, built in 1948, and industries including a titanium dioxide pigment factory and waste water plant set up in or near the town, utilising its proximity to the Port of Bunbury. However, suburban development as part of “Greater Bunbury” saw the town quadruple in size by 1981.

A primary school opened in 1980, relieving pressure on nearby Eaton, and was followed by a high school which opened in 1987. New estates opened over the coming years. In the mid-1980s the State Government and the Shire of Harvey made plans to relocate most of the industries to a new industrial park at nearby Kemerton, and by 2001 the town was predominantly residential with increasing property values and the census region reported over 10,000 residents, over half of whom are first- or second-generation British immigrants with a notable Italian minority.

Australind is bordered to the south by the Collie River, to the west by the Leschenault Estuary and to the east by the Brunswick River. It includes the estates of Galway Green and Clifton Park. Several suburbs – Leschenault, Kemerton and most recently Kingston – have seceded from Australind since the 1980s.

Nearby Suburbs