Public Art In Bentley

Bentley is a southern suburb of Perth located 8 km southeast of Perth’s central business district. Prior to European settlement, the area was home to the Beeloo Nyungar people, whose territory extended from the Canning River to the Darling Scarp.

From the 1860s the area within the district was known as “Bentley Hill” in honour of John Bentley (1822-1871), a prison warder and Crimean War veteran who arrived in the Swan River Colony as a pensioner guard, and supervised the convicts who helped build the then-Albany ‘block’ Road between 1862-1864. However, in 1940, the Canning Roads Board proposed the name Bentley Park. The suffix Park was later dropped in 1967.

The area is well known for being the home of the West Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT), later renamed the Curtin University, which was opened in 1967. The Western Australian Technology Park made up of over over 90 companies, government departments and research groups was established opposite the university in 1985 and today contributes over $2 billion per annum to the Western Australian economy.