South Kalamunda Travel Guide

Kalamunda (post code: 6076) is a town and eastern suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located in the Darling Scarp at the eastern limits of the Perth metropolitan area.
The word is derived from two Noongar (an Indigenous Australian language) words: kala meaning "home" and munda meaning "forest", hence spawning the Shire's motto "A home in the forest".
At 300m above sea level, Kalamunda and the surrounding areas experience colder night temperatures than the bulk of the Perth Metropolitan area to the west. Deep clay soils in the valleys in this area provide ideal growing conditions for stone fruits, apples and pears, and for a small commercial rose growing industry.
The town was once part of a thriving logging region, being a stopping place on the Upper Darling Range Railway. The area has a number of features as a result of this railway including a museum at the site of the original station. Typical rail side road structures with a rail reserve between and the Zig-zag road on the old section where the railway climbed the Darling escarpment. The region also has extensive areas with orchards, primarily involved in apple and stone fruit production.
Kalamunda largely serves as a dormitory suburb for Perth workers. It has a modest retail, government and education sector, and a small industrial base. While the town's retail centre is the largest in the Darling Scarp it primarily services Kalamunda and the contiguous urbanised areas of Lesmurdie and Walliston. To the south and east the urban area transitions into the semi-rural and orchard growing areas of Bickley, Carmel and Pickering Brook, which in turn give way to extensive jarrah and marri forests. The suburb of Gooseberry Hill is located to the north of Kalamunda where the terrain drops away sharply to the Helena Valley effectively isolating the Kalamunda from other Darling Scarp population centres to the north. It is at Gooseberry Hill that the railway used to descend from the hills to Midland Junction, dropping 300 metres in a series in a series of 5 zig-zag shunts. The railway line has been replaced by a single lane, one-way scenic drive that follows the old track. (...) more....

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