Expert Pest Control Services in Byford

Byford is a suburb on the south-eastern edge of Perth, Western Australia, within the Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale. The town has its origins in a township that was gazetted under the name "Beenup" in 1906. In 1920, the name of the township was changed to Byford.

Little has been documented of the Aboriginal occupation of the Byford area, but material traces of the district's original inhabitants have been found in numerous locations.

During the colonial period, the foothills were on the periphery of Thomas Peel's 1834 land grant, and during the 1840s European settlers took up small land holdings around the area at Wungong and Cardup. By the 1890s, the area was settled by a small number of large landowners, with names of early settlers included Lazenby, Mead, and Liddelow. Mead was an enterprising farmer with numerous landholdings in the foothills between the Serpentine River and the Wongong Brook, and at East Rockingham. Majority of early settlers in Byford lived in poor conditions before they obtained building supplies for houses, and often had large families with up to 13 children.

Brickmaking contributed much to the development of Byford. Shale at Cardup had already come to the attention of colonists by the 1850s, but it was not until around the turn of the 20th century that a commercial brickmaking venture commenced at Cardup. In 1903, John Millard (a former manager of the Bunning Bros brickworks in East Perth) established The Cardup Steam Pressed Brick Company. Two years later, he entered into partnership with Atkins and Law, a rising giant in Western Australia's commercial world. With an injection of capital from Atkins and Law, the brickworks grew to become one of the state's leading producers of pressed shale brick.

A second major brickworks was set up at Beenup, north of Cardup, in 1913. This industry was a state government initiative aimed at reducing the cost of worker housing. Like the brickworks operating at Cardup and Armadale, this one exploited the shale deposits of the escarpment to produce high quality pressed brick and used the railway to transport the finished product to customers. The State Brickworks at Byford closed down in 1964, due in part to its operations being eclipsed by a new brickworks in Armadale. The Cardup brickworks closed in 2012, but much of the infrastructure is still extant.

Shortly after the brickworks had been established at Beenup, local land owner Mr C C Blythe (of Blythewood Park Estate) initiated the planning of another townsite on the eastern side of the rail line - a convenient distance from the brickworks and highway. The new townsite, which is now the most established part of Byford, has a distinctive square plan in which are centred two concentric circles, long diagonal roads, and short perpendicular roads. Blythe gave the new settlement a hall. A new name for the township was chosen by residents in 1919 and gazetted the following year. Anglican and Presbyterian churches and a state school were among the first community buildings erected in Byford.

The original 1906 township was located south-west of the intersection of Soldiers Road and Mead Street but it appears that little if any housing was built in that area until much later in the 20th century. However, the 1906 townsite included an allocation of land for recreation which is still used for that purpose today.

Construction of the South Western Railway reached the district in 1892. The railway was used to transport timber and, later in the 1910s, egg and milk from Byford to Perth. Some time later a stop bearing the name Beenup was established in the vicinity of the present day township. In 1957 a station was established on the line between Abernethy Road and Mead Street. After a long period of disuse, this station was demolished around 1990. The current Byford station is located just south of this. It is served by Transwa's twice daily Australind service from Perth to Bunbury.

In the 1920s the estate of a local land-owner, Samuel Bateman, was subdivided into smaller farms for the Group Settlement Scheme. The Group Settlement Scheme also brought out 40 families to Byford to establish dairy farms, but majority of the families abandoned the land grants due to the area's poor soil and high water table.

Following the Fall of Singapore, a secret armament depot was established in Byford in 1942, due to its rail access and being far enough from the coast to be safe from a seaborne attack by the Japanese. Other sites considered were Cannington and Cardup. In December 1942, the Allied Works Council began storing explosives from Britain. The depot was later expanded to provide for mines and gunnery equipment. Throughout World War II, it supplied armaments to Allied navies except the Americans, and when British submarines began operating in Fremantle in 1944, it was the assembly point of submarine ammunition. At its peak it employed around 250 civilian workers, and by May 1948 it was 141. The depot was disclosed to the public at the end of the war. It costed £250,000 to construct, and had a value of £1,000,000 by 1945.

Its security was provided by the Naval Dockyard Police (NDP), which was the last branch of the Royal Australian Army to be horse-borne. Byford was one of only two depots in Australia to be patrolled by the NDP, the other being Newington, New South Wales. The NDP patrolled the Byford depot up to 1952, when it was transferred to HMAS Leeuwin. The depot was known during the war as "R.A.N. 145", and then as "Naval Armament Depot, Fremantle" up to 1947 when it was renamed Naval Armament Depot, Byford.

In 1981, the depot in Byford was relocated to Garden Island, and in 2005 the remaining buildings were demolished for the housing estate "Byford on the Scarp".

In 1977, the local government responsibilities for Byford were transferred from the Shire of Armadale-Kelmscott (now the City of Armadale) to the Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale. Recently, Byford has become an extension of the Perth metropolitan area, connected to the Kwinana Freeway by Thomas Road, and has experienced a substantial rise in population.

Historically, Byford's rural land supported sheep, beef and dairy cattle, orchards, and a vineyard (Sunrays, owned by the Vlasich family), but in recent decades there has been an increase in hobby farms geared to equine pursuits, and more recently housing estates with generous lot sizes.

A Free Reformed Church was opened on the corner of Soldiers Road and Mead Street in 1987, and a private school was later built alongside this church.

In the early 2010s, "The Glades" was developed in the town's west and it became the first real estate development in the state to receive certification in the three categories of the UDIA EnviroDevelopment program. The development went on to win three awards, including two national awards. The Glades derives its name from the area's wide green spaces. The estate's precincts of Coral Gardens is named after the abundance of coral trees in it; William's Place is named after William Percival Nairn, who was a farmer in the Cardup-Beenup area and served in World War II; and Icaria after the Greek island of the same name.

In 2017, the WA-based company WBHO Infrastructure in joint venture with the Singaporean Phoenix Solar to construct the Byford Solar Farm. The farm will become the first utility scale solar farm to be located in a metropolitan area in Australia, and the largest solar farm within WA. Upon completion, it will generate around 80,000 MWh annually for the South-West integrated system. It is being developed by WestGen. Originally expected to be operational in 2018, WestGen received a two-year extension in 2022. The project is expected to cost $140 million.