2025 marks 34 years of SPH’s continuing opposition to the

Anglican Church’s bushfire dangerous and environmentally

destructive proposed ‘North Stoneville’ townsite.

Save Perth Hills Inc.(SPH) is based in the heart of Perth Hills in Western Australia’s Mundaring Shire, part of Australia’s only two remaining internationally-recognised biodiverse regions.

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Since 1991 the SPH Community has campaigned to stop a firetrap and environmentally destructive 1990’s-style stranded Urban townsite for more than 3000 people. The 550-hectare Hills’ land was ‘gifted’ to the Anglican Church by Queen Victoria in the1890’s. The Church calls the land ‘North Stoneville’. Save Perth Hills calls the land the Biggest Business Embarrassment of the Anglican Church Perth Diocese – the Church’s real-estate business arm.

 

If the plan goes ahead, 60,000 TREES, some 200 years and older, which provide critical habitat to ENDANGERED BLACK COCKATOOS, will be BULLDOZED by the Church and its business partner - Australia’s biggest private land developer, Satterley Property Group.

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WHY NORTH STONEVIILLE MUST NEVER BE BUILT

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SPH’s opposition to ‘North Stoneville’ is backed by repeated rejections of Satterley and the Church’s plan, including from:

• Western Australia’s top planning authority, WA Planning Commission (WAPC)

• WA’s Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES)

• Mundaring Shire Council

• Save Perth Hills’ Community and

• More than 4,000 public submissions; and

• Evidence of Perth’s Hills increasing bushfire volatility and environmental vulnerability.

 

Satterley and the Church refuse to accept the rejections and evidence and have lodged an appeal to be heard by WA’s independent State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) late in 2025.

 

In recent years devastating bushfires have destroyed or damaged more than 250 homes in this semi-rural and rural region, including on and around ‘North Stoneville.’  Hundreds of Hills’ residents and families have been impacted by these bushfires, some permanently.

 

In 2021, Perth Hills’ worst bushfire in history, the Wooroloo Bushfire, destroyed 87 homes and11,000 hectares of bush.

The fire burned within 5 kilometres of proposed ‘North Stoneville’.

 

Adding 3000 extra people, KNOWINGLY, inside a proven and Extreme Bushfire Zone, in an inappropriate ‘Urban’ setting, would also place surrounding residents in great danger, with the area’s tight, narrow rural road network at risk of deadly gridlock during mass evacuation in a bushfire emergency. These bushfires are becoming increasingly severe – and frequent.