Towns in Australia

Exploring Australia, town by town

Wonnerup WA

Wonnerup

Postcode: 6280

The townsite of Wonnerup is located 219 km south of Perth and 10 km east of Busselton. It was gazetted a townsite in 1856, deriving its name from the nearby Wonnerup Inlet.

The name is Aboriginal, having been shown on maps of the region since 1839. The meaning of the name is “place of the woman’s digging or fighting stick”‘; the Noongar word for fighting stick is wonna, while the suffix -up denotes place of. The wonna was made from the peppermint tree, Agonis flexuosa, a costal native found only in the south-west, and was a common trade item of the Noongar people.