More people in the Poms in Perth group give their location as Mandurah than any other place except Perth itself. Almost none of them mean the suburb this page is about.
Mandurah is both a city of roughly ninety thousand people and a suburb of under nine thousand inside it. The figures here are the suburb, which is the old town centre around the estuary.
The One Thing People Get Wrong
When somebody in the group says they live in Mandurah, they usually mean the city: Halls Head, Dawesville, Erskine, Falcon, Meadow Springs and the rest.
The suburb of Mandurah itself is the old centre. It has 8,804 people and a median age of 50, which is a different character from the family estates spread around it.
This matters when you are reading listings or asking the group for advice, because two people using the same word can be describing places twenty minutes and twenty years apart. Ask which part somebody actually means.
What It Is Actually Like
The estuary and the foreshore are the reason people come, and they are genuinely good. Boats, dolphins, crab season and a waterfront that works in summer and in winter.
The suburb centre is older housing, holiday apartments and a long established retirement population. The median age of 50 is the highest on this list by more than ten years.
Mandurah is the southern end of the Mandurah railway line, so the train runs from here straight into Perth.
Schools
The schools most British families end up using are in the surrounding suburbs rather than the old centre, which follows from where the family housing is.
Confirm catchments with the Department of Education for the specific address, because Mandurah the city covers a lot of ground and the answer changes across 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.
Being Honest About Mandurah
Seventy two kilometres is a long way from Perth. The train makes it possible and it is still around an hour each way, every day, and people who do it for years usually stop.
At 9.2% England born it has the smallest British community on this list. That is still above the Western Australian figure of 7.4%, and Alkimos and Secret Harbour are roughly double it.
If you are moving for a job in Perth, this is a holiday town you are commuting from. If you are moving for the water and can work locally or remotely, that calculation looks completely different.
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 Mandurah. 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.