Kinross was built through the early nineties and the street names give the game away: Glencoe Loop, Edinburgh Avenue, Ben Nevis Turn. It has been a landing place for British, Irish and South African families for thirty years.
It is the one suburb on this list where your children can do the whole of their schooling without leaving it, and that is the reason most families with older children end up looking here.
The One Thing People Get Wrong
You may be told your child has to change schools at fifteen. That is out of date.
Kinross College was a middle school covering years six to ten, so students finished there and moved elsewhere for years eleven and twelve. It is now a 7 to 12 high school, which means a child can start at Kinross Primary and finish at Kinross College without moving suburb.
The advice you will find online, and from people who have lived here a while, often still describes the old arrangement. Confirm the current position with the school directly rather than taking either version on trust, including this one.
Both schools are on the same side of the suburb, along Kinross Drive and Callander Avenue.
Schools
Kinross Primary School opened in 1995 and has around six hundred and fifty students. Kinross College opened in 2002 and now runs to year twelve.
Having both in the suburb is genuinely unusual this far north, and it is the practical reason to choose Kinross over the coastal suburbs either side of it.
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.
What It Is Actually Like
Nineties housing, established gardens, and a younger population than the coastal suburbs around it. The median age is 38, against 46 in Iluka, so there are more children about.
Neerabup National Park sits along the north east edge and Tamala Park to the north, so the suburb has real bush on two sides. Parts of it have an ocean view without paying an ocean price, because the coast itself is a suburb away.
There is a skate park and a community centre near MacNaughton Park. Currambine and Joondalup cover shopping and the train.
Being Honest About Kinross
It is not on the coast. The beach is a short drive rather than a walk, and if living by the sea is the reason you are moving to Perth then Burns Beach, Iluka or Mindarie are the honest answers instead.
The housing is thirty years old and some of it looks it, so what you see on a street matters more than what you read about the suburb.
What you get in exchange is both schools in one place, a lot of families who arrived the same way you did, and a price that reflects being one suburb back from the water.
The Questions We Cannot Answer Here
Mortgages, visas, insurance and shipping come up constantly, and we are not licensed to advise on any of them. What we can do is point you at the firms in our directory who are, and who deal with British and Irish arrivals every week.
Ask Somebody Who Lives There
40,000+ British and Irish people in Perth are in our community, across the group, page and Instagram, and a good number of them live in Kinross. If you want to know whether it suits your family, ask them. It is free to join, and somebody will answer within the hour, usually several somebodies with strong opinions.