Perth Prohibited Area
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“[On] this 9th day of March, 1927,” “I … hereby declare the City of Perth to be an area in which it shall be unlawful for aborigines or half-castes (sic) not in lawful employment to be or remain”
Between 1927 to 1954, a State Government proclamation declared an ill-defined exclusion zone within the ‘City of Perth’, which was imposed upon the Aboriginal (Whadjuk Noongar) population.
The Prohibited Area was instigated under the paternalistic guise of ‘native welfare’ by the ‘Chief Protector of the Aborigines’, A.O. Neville. He stated “there is no reason why aboriginals or half-castes should wander about the city without any visible occupation” and he deemed the Perth Prohibited Area (PPA) to “certainly be in the best interest of the natives themselves“. Neville further elaborated on the PPA’s rationale when writing about young Aboriginal women frequenting the former amusement park (at the now Elizabeth Quay area) unironically named ‘White City’:
“I repeat that it is my desire that neither half-castes nor aboriginals be permitted to frequent the White City on any pretext whatever. It is simply debasing the natives, and the [Aboriginal boxing] contests lower the status of the whites in their eyes.”
By mid 1937, a ‘Native Pass’ system was adopted wherein the Chief Protector or police officers had the power to issue Aboriginal individuals a pass to allow for conditional entry with the PPA.
Throughout the implementation of the pass system, police officers were often reluctant to enforce the Native Pass system. The Police Commissioner revealed it “was not desired to harass well conducted natives visiting Perth for genuine reasons.” However, this admittance only agitated Neville: “Perth is a prohibited area for natives … those who cannot give a good account of themselves, as well as their reasons for being about town, are to be ordered out immediately“.
On the pass system, the Deputy Commission wrote:
“There are still some natives about the Prohibited Area of the City of Perth without passes. No doubt, some of them are somewhat civilised and dressed decently but the fact remains that they are natives and should be in possess of passes if the native situation in Perth is to be kept in hand.”
The ambiguous and contradictory PPA system began to unravel and the enforcement of the passes waned. Looming regulation change was set to revive the system, however the eventual onset of war resulted in further police staffing difficulties and a changing social attitude to conceptions of Aboriginal assimilation.
By 1947, issues arose due to a lack of a formally demarcated PPA boundary. The Lands Department was engaged to formalise a boundary of the PPA, and these boundaries were scaled back from the ambiguous 1927 City of Perth ward boundary – stretching from Victoria Park west to the coast – to an area surrounding the Perth (Boorloo) city centre.
Despite the formalising of the PPA boundary, in June 1954, the PPA proclamation was revoked, and thus unceremoniously ended 27 years of segregation and exclusion.
Perth Prohibited Area 