Ridgewood, Western Australia

Ridgewood is an outer suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located 37 kilometres north of Perth's central business district. It is part of the City of Wanneroo local government area.It is primarily made up of single dwellings on blocks ranging from 220m2 up to 800m2 (primarily around the 500m2 mark) with occasional duplex or battle axe block developments.GeographyRidgewood is bordered to the north by Butler (Lukin Drive), to the south by Clarkson (Hester Avenue) and to the west by Merriwa (Connolly Drive). The Joondalup railway line reserve separates Ridgewood from the rural locality of Nowergup in the east.HistoryRidgewood's name refers to the wooded terrain on the Swan Coastal Plain. The suburb was formerly a part of Merriwa until 1998, when Merriwa was split in two along Connolly Drive. The eastern half of Merriwa was gazetted as Ridgewood. At the time, only south Ridgewood was populated, containing the "Carnegie Private Estate" that was built in the mid-1990s. The estate had a small population of 968.There were campaigns for Ridgewood's separation from Merriwa as far back as 1994, not long after the Carnegie Estate had been built by developers Town and Country Holdings. The developers lodged a request with the City of Wanneroo to bifurcate the area from Merriwa and rename the new locality "Carnegie", after the estate, which in turn was named in honour of David Carnegie, one of the earliest explorers of Western Australia. Although the request was rejected, the City supported the excision of the estate from Merriwa, leading to the creation of Ridgewood four years later.