Plumber Swanbourne

Swanbourne WA 6010, City of Nedlands. About 11 km west of the Perth CBD.

Swanbourne is a coastal suburb about eleven kilometres west of the Perth CBD within the City of Nedlands. Established in the late nineteenth century, it was originally called Osborne and renamed in 1921 to avoid confusion with Osborne Park. It is bounded by the Swanbourne Rifle Range and Cottesloe Golf Club to the north, Lake Claremont to the east, the Fremantle railway line to the south and the Indian Ocean to the west. Newer housing estates have been built on the former Swanbourne Senior High School, Swanbourne Primary School and Lakeway Drive-In sites.

• Federation housing now being renovatedMost of the older Swanbourne stock is Federation era and is being renovated rather than replaced. That means galvanised water pipe and earthenware sewer being opened up after a century of service, and the sensible time to replace those runs is while the walls are already open.
• New estates on former school and cinema sitesThe old Swanbourne Senior High School, the primary school and the Lakeway Drive-In sites have all been redeveloped for housing. Those blocks have modern water and sewer connections cut into older street mains, so a fault there is a completely different job to one in a Federation house nearby.
• Bounded by a rifle range and a golf courseThe Swanbourne Rifle Range and Cottesloe Golf Club form the northern boundary, and grounds of that size run irrigation and amenity blocks rather than domestic fixtures. That work is booked around their operating hours rather than attended on spec.
• A high proportion of defence householdsClose to nine per cent of working Swanbourne residents are employed in defence, and service families are often posted away for long periods. A slow leak in an empty house runs undetected for months, which is why we are regularly called to water damage rather than to the leak itself.