A landmark industrial development, undertaken in joint venture with the Noongar Charitable Trust.

Hesperia worked in joint venture with the Noongar Charitable Trust, a not-for-profit entity established by the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC) to navigate the cultural and heritage aspects of the project. Delivery of Aboriginal housing, preservation and restoration of heritage sites including an Aboriginal cemetery, and vesting of land into the trust were just some of the initiatives manged by Hesperia in the delivery of Northlink.

At its conclusion, the project delivered $30 million to the trust to be reinvested in local community initiatives including education, training, preservation of culture, business funding and housing assistance.

In addition to the requirements of the joint venture partnership, the Northlink project site presented a number of challenges. The first of these was the requirement for a rapid planning and design program that saw the site rezoned and development approvals secured in under two years.

Extensive site remediation was then required to remove historic contamination and successfully reclassify the site as ‘decontaminated’. It was also essential that site vegetation and wetlands, critical to cultural and heritage sites in the area, were preserved. 

At the conclusion of development, 20 hectares of the 80 hectare total landholding had been reserved as ‘Bush Forever’, along with the preservation of wetlands and feeding habitat for black cockatoos.