Northbridge Perth Western Australia

New York has Times square, London the West End, Sydney Kings Cross and Perth has Northbridge! Northbridge, “Where the hell is that?” You may say, but for thousands of backpackers who have visited Perth from around the world a place they have fond memories of and maybe not so fond! While we are living in Perth, Northbridge has become a place we are quite familiar with as we live only a stones throw away. So what makes Northbridge so special? Well according to Northbridgealive.com the area is a world-class location for tourists as well as locals, offering:

Some of the best bars and night clubs in Western Australia
A vibrant and multi-faceted environment
An eclectic mix of shops offering a unique range of products
A wide range of professional services
Some of the best cafés and restaurants, with many options
A diverse cultural experience including galleries and museums
Frequent indoor and outdoor cultural events
Northbridge is the ideal place to meet friends, start the day, end the day, or simply enjoy the atmosphere.

Northbridge Perth Western Australia WA Vegas

Quite a claim to have some of the best bars, night clubs and restaurants in Western Australia, a state which occupies a third of the nation, but it’s probably true. Western Australia is a vast region but most of the population lives in or around the Perth area, metropolitan and suburban. Perth has a somewhat unfair reputation as being quite a dull city with lights out by 11pm. Yes Perth isn’t exactly a 24/7 city and is tranquil compared to lively Sydney and Melbourne, but it is improving with Northbridge as its lively hub.

Many backpacking lodgings are also in the area and with so many bars and nightclubs it’s no surprise that the area is full of revellers, especially at the weekend. With that can come trouble at times with a visible Police presence particularly on Saturday nights. Overall it is a good place to be and with a large Asian community in the area comes a host of differing food establishments. Foods from Vietnam to Turkey, Thailand to India, vegetarian to seafood, you certainly will not go hungry here. Many world cities have substantial ethnic areas with impressive China towns in Vancouver, Melbourne and São Paulo most notably. A stroll through Northbridge will have you believing you have been transported to Asia, with shop signs written in Cantonese, Thai and Vietnamese. It also appears that every Asian in the city comes here to do business whether to transfer money home, eat out or buy groceries, it certainly is a long way from the small mining town Perth was many years ago. At this point we have sampled most of what the restaurants in Northbridge has to offer from delicious bowls of pho, sushi, bento box and Mongolian beef, it’s a foodies heaven.

Overall it’s a great place for those looking for a good time. Dotted in between the many bars and restaurants are cafés, vintage clothing and record stores as well as a few tattoo and piercing shops, strip clubs and adult stores, so quite a mix. The piazza near Lake St is also a nice place to chill on the grass whilst watching a huge outdoor TV showing anything from news to cartoons. Northbridge isn’t for everybody though and I must admit there are a fair share of “weirdos” here at times, anything from people off their faces talking to themselves to random verbal abuse from a disgruntled and intoxicated Aboriginal but this isn’t a daily occurrence and is easily ignored or laughed off.

The area certainly has changed from the early days in fact, it came in to its own in the 1890s with the gold boom. Northbridge was the ideal location to build hotels, boarding houses and hostelries for these working men to come and live. That was when you got the construction of the hotels that are iconic now what we know as The Brass Monkey but was then The Great Western, [built] in 1896. Opposite it, at the south-west corner of James and William Streets, you have the Busy Bee Arcade that was constructed and opened in 1894 and [was] the first shopping arcade in Western Australia, which would have attracted all sorts of people, the A-list if you like. Nowadays residents don’t think of Northbridge as housing the A-list, but in the 1890s it housed people like the Attorney-General, the social elite, many of the big businessmen, and the private schools Scotch College and PLC were established in Northbridge because that’s where the wealthy elite were living and it wasn’t until after the First World War that those schools moved out to the western suburbs.

Around the same time as the elite moved out of Northbridge, the first immigrants to give it a modern character moved in, the Greeks and the Macedonians and after the Second World War there was a bigger contingent of Italians that emigrated who tended to open restaurants. These events have shaped and turned Northbridge into what it is today.
As you can see the area has quite a history and will continue long into the future, what more is there to say, if you visit Perth no night out would be complete without a visit, if not an afternoon stroll then and a meal in one of the many restaurants. Perth’s playground even with its close proximity to the CBD has long been cut off due to the railway lines to Fremantle and Joondalup, but with the completion of the Perth City Link project, which will see the former railway yard that was just to the west of the Perth railway station changed to an urban development project, it seems as though the area will grow from strength to strength.

Our Recommendations in Northbridge

Western Australian Museum, Museum in Perth Cultural Centre with social & cultural history exhibits, plus a cafe in an old jail. Perth Cultural Centre, James St. One of the many restaurants ranging from local and American fare in Hog’s Breath café or Outback Jacks. Italian food, Serbian food and countless Asian eats from India, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan and Taiwan, many to be found in Old Shanghai.

Bars and nightlife;  The Brass Monkey is always a popular haunt and the many Irish themed bars from Rosie O’Grady’s to the cure tavern.