Perth International Airport
Facts on PER
The airfield was laid out in 1938 on land Governor James Stirling had granted to John Scott, a yeoman farmer from Lanarkshire who sailed out in 1831 to run a bloodstock farm for the colony. By then the ground was the disused Dunreath Golf Course; a plaque to Scott survives on the old international terminal.
Source: Wikipedia
Perth is named for Perth in Scotland, in honour of Sir George Murray (1772–1846). Murray was Wellington's Quartermaster General through the Peninsular War — present at Talavera, Bussaco, Vittoria and Toulouse — later Governor of Sandhurst, President of the Royal Geographical Society, and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies from 1828.
Source: Wikipedia
Murray sat in the Commons for Perthshire, and the colony took its name from his seat. James Stirling's proclamation of the Swan River Colony, read at Fremantle on 18 June 1829, closes 'Given under my hand and Seal at Perth'; Charles Fremantle's diary records they named the town 'according to the wishes of Sir George Murray'.
Source: Wikipedia
It spent the war as RAAF Station Guildford, a military field shared reluctantly with airlines from 1944. It gained international status in September 1952 and was renamed Perth Airport in March 1953, at a ceremony held on the apron in front of a converted Bellman hangar that served as the passenger terminal.
Source: Wikipedia
Civil flying began in 1944 over military objections — the RAAF argued airliners would wreck the base's camouflage. Australian National Airways flew the first commercial service, a DC-3 to Adelaide, and on 17 June 1944 Qantas set off for Ceylon via Exmouth in a modified Consolidated B-24 Liberator.
Source: Wikipedia
The combined terminal opened in 1962 came with an observation deck, a pond stocked with black swans, and a cocktail lounge called the Orbit Inne. Locals adopted it, because for years it was the only place in Perth that served drinks on a Sunday night.
Source: Wikipedia
The control tower built alongside the new international terminal from March 1984 was the tallest in Australia when it went up — and still is. The terminal itself opened on 25 October 1986, and could process up to five Boeing 747s an hour.
Source: Wikipedia
Perth became Australia's door to Europe in March 2018, when Qantas began flying Boeing 787s non-stop to London Heathrow. A seasonal Rome service followed in June 2022 and Paris Charles de Gaulle in July 2024, giving the airport three direct European links.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport sits about 10 km east of the city centre on Whadjuk Noongar country, spread across 2,105 hectares (5,202 acres) — and it serves a city so remote that Perth is regularly described as the world's most isolated major city.
Source: Wikipedia