The University of Western Australia stood alone, the sole beacon of higher learning in the State. However, the need for a second university was becoming increasingly apparent. The State Government, recognising this need, earmarked a site in Bull Creek in 1962, setting aside 162 hectares of Crown Land for a future university, a regional hospital, and a teachers' college.

The chosen site was the Somerville Pine Plantation, the traditional lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation - lands where Indigenous knowledges were practiced and passed down over tens of thousands of years.

Image: Somerville Pine Plantation

By 1966, the State Government appointed Sir Lawrence Jackson to chair a committee to examine the future needs of tertiary education. The Jackson report recommended the Somerville Pine Plantation for its proximity to projected freeways and the largest piece of endowment land in the metropolitan area.

In 1970, the announcement came: Premier Sir David Brand declared that the new university would be named Murdoch, in honour of the esteemed author, philosopher, and academic Sir Walter Murdoch. The Murdoch University Planning Board was established, and Professor Geoffrey Bolton, one of the country's finest historians, was appointed to the board.

The planning board, chaired by Noel Bayliss, a Professor of Chemistry at UWA, and with Dan Dunn as Secretary, was tasked with overseeing every aspect of the new university's development. Their responsibilities ranged from physical planning to financial allocation, ensuring that the university's first phase was meticulously crafted.

The key appointment was that of inaugural Vice Chancellor Professor Stephen Griew – a 43-year-old Professor of Psychology from the University of Dundee. He played a key role in the appointment of the 10 foundation professors, the drive to establish external studies and the establishment of the Murdoch ethos, remarking that there was “no excuse for a new university to make the same mistakes as the old universities which had been handicapped by tradition”.

Image: Inaugural Vice Chancellor Professor Stephen Griew

The physical planning of the site was entrusted to Gordon Stephenson and architect Gus Ferguson. Along with landscape architect Dr Marion Blackwell, they envisioned a campus that embraced the Australian landscape, adopting sustainable architectural design, and the planting of native plants and trees gradually replacing the pines. The design was bold and controversial for its time, but as Professor Bolton noted, it was a rare achievement among Australian university buildings, sustaining an authentically Australian idiom.

The foundation staff, while the campus was under construction, found a temporary home in the Noalimba Migrant Hostel in Bull Creek. The first Chancellor appointed was Justice Wickham of the WA Supreme Court, marking the beginning of a new era in Western Australian education.