The City of Rockingham covers about 260 square kilometres and 37 km of coastline on Perth's southern edge. The City puts it about 40 km south-west of the Perth CBD. Mandurah line trains have stopped at Rockingham and Warnbro since the line opened in December 2007, and the state has committed to start building a station at Karnup in 2028. The 2021 census counted 135,678 people, and the City's own profile now gives a figure of around 160,000. Its suburbs are Baldivis, Cooloongup, East Rockingham, Garden Island, Golden Bay, Hillman, Karnup, Peron, Port Kennedy, Rockingham, Safety Bay, Secret Harbour, Shoalwater, Singleton, Waikiki and Warnbro, plus part of Keralup. Baldivis is the largest, with 37,697 residents in 2021 against 15,312 in the Rockingham suburb itself. Our Perth web design page covers the wider metro area; this page is about what's particular to Rockingham.
Rockingham is the Navy's home in the west. Fleet Base West is at HMAS Stirling on Garden Island, joined to the mainland by a 4.3 km causeway completed in 1973. The City describes it as the Royal Australian Navy's largest base, home to Anzac class frigates and Collins class submarines as well as some 70 other units. As part of AUKUS, the Australian Government will invest up to $8 billion over the next decade to expand the base, which the City expects to create around 3,000 direct jobs, and a rotational presence of UK and US nuclear-powered submarines is planned from as early as 2027. On 30 April 2025 the City and the Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce held a defence forum that included a session for local small and medium businesses on entering the defence supply chain. For a local supplier, the first person reading your website may well be a buyer checking what you can do before they shortlist you.
North of the city are the Kwinana industrial area and the Australian Marine Complex at Henderson, which the City puts about 25 km and under 20 minutes away. The WA Government's Westport program plans to move container trade from Fremantle to new port facilities in the Kwinana Outer Harbour, and in August 2026 a consortium was appointed to progress planning for the freight rail upgrades it needs. Council adopted an Economic Development Strategy 2025–2030 on 24 June 2025, and the City pitches the region to investors on advanced manufacturing, defence, energy decarbonisation, healthcare, mineral processing and tourism. Closer to home, Rockingham General Hospital runs an emergency department, and Murdoch University has a campus on Dixon Road focused on pathway programs for people preparing for university.
The coast brings the visitors. Penguin Island, 12.5 hectares and less than 700 m off Mersey Point, is a breeding site for little penguins: the ferry runs hourly from October to June, the island closes from June to October for breeding, and between 1 December and 28 February it can close for the whole day when the forecast reaches 35°C. The City's visitor pages send people kayaking in the Shoalwater Islands Marine Park, walking the coast at Point Peron/Boya Kaarla, diving the wrecks of the West Coast Dive Park, surfing at Secret Harbour and eating on the foreshore, and note that visitation peaks in summer. A tour, hire or hospitality site here has to show the season, the times and the way to book on the first screen of a phone, and keep closure notices current.
We're an Adelaide team and work with Rockingham businesses by phone and email; we don't fly over for meetings. We haven't built a site for a Western Australian client yet, so the examples below come from other states. If your customers stretch south into the Peel, our Mandurah tradies page covers that side, and our Fremantle page covers the port city to the north.