Moving to Calista: What British Families Should Know

Type Kwinana into a search and you get the industrial strip: the oil refinery, the alumina plant, the port. All of that is real, and it is a few kilometres west of here on the coast.

Calista is a residential suburb of 2.3 square kilometres named after a ship. The Calista reached the Swan River Colony on 5 August 1829 with 73 passengers aboard under Captain S. Hawkins, which is more than a century before anybody built a refinery.

The largest thing inside the suburb is a playground. Kwinana Adventure Park is in Calista and was voted Western Australia's joint Favourite Playground in 2021. People who come to look at the houses tend to find that out afterwards.

There is no station in Calista. Kwinana station, on the Mandurah line, sits on the Bertram and Parmelia border a few kilometres inland, and the 540 and 543 buses run between it and the Kwinana bus station.

That bus station and Kwinana Marketplace are both in the town centre immediately north, which from a good deal of Calista is a walk rather than a drive. How much of a walk depends entirely on the street, so check the particular address rather than the suburb.

Routes and timetables change. Transperth is the place to check them, and the answer you want is the one for the street you are actually considering.

Old, by the standards of this list. The median age is 48, against 36 in Port Kennedy and 31 in Alkimos, and the housing is mid century rather than new build: about sixty nine per cent separate houses and twenty seven per cent semi detached, row or townhouse, which is a very different mix from the four bedroom estates further south.

The Census medians for the households already living here are $953 a week in income, $250 a week in rent and $1,300 a month in mortgage repayments. Those describe the people who live in Calista now. They are not asking prices, and the Census that produced them is five years old.

English is the stated ancestry of 49.5% of residents, Scottish of 10.3% and Irish of 7.7%, and 40 people were born in Scotland on top of the 300 born in England. The British presence here is not a recent thing.

Calista Primary School is inside the suburb, which is not true of most places this size on this list.

Secondary is Gilmore College, about a kilometre away in Orelia next door.

Confirm catchments with the Department of Education for the specific address you are considering.

The Australian school year starts in late January and finishes in December. It does not run September to July. If you are arriving mid year your children will be joining part way through, and if you are timing your move around schooling you are aiming at January rather than September.

A median household income of $953 a week and a median rent of $250 tell you what kind of suburb this is, and nothing on a website can tell you whether that is what you want. Go and walk it on a weekday.

The industrial strip is close. Whether that matters to you is a question about your own nose and your own tolerance, and standing in the suburb for an hour answers it better than any page can.

Fifteen per cent born in England is a real community, and a median age of 48 says a good deal of it has been here a long time. That is a different proposition from arriving with primary aged children and wanting neighbours who did the same thing last year. If that is you, Baldivis and Secret Harbour are the honest answers instead.