Blackboy Hill

Blackboy Hill is situated 25 kilometres east of Perth in the foot of the Darling Ranges. It was so-named because of its once-dense cover of the Western Australian grass tree, the blackboy. Blackboy Hill was chosen soon after the declaration of World War One in August 1914 as the site of a training camp for volunteers. Some 32,000 men from a total State population of 300,000 trained at Blackboy Hill. This was the birthplace of the AIF in Western Australia.

After the War the camp reverted to bushland, but in 1957, when the State Government decided to give the area over to home building, the State Executive of the League successfully asked that a portion be set-aside as a commemorative site. A returned serviceman, Ean McDonald, designed a configuration of commemorative arches, a flagpole and stone seat, placed so that a visitor could stand at the entrance and look down past the flagpole, through the arches and over the middle of the seat of the city of Perth, the whole line coinciding exactly with sunset on 24 April.