The original inhabitants of the Armadale region were the Nyoongar people. There are numerous places in and around Armadale that retain Aboriginal names as an acknowledgment of the area’s first inhabitants.
With the arrival of Europeans to Western Australia the Swan River Colony was created in 1829 and the town of Kelmscott was established as an army barrack. Kelmscott was proclaimed a townsite in 1830, making it one of the oldest towns in the state. The district prospered in the early days as a centre for timber cutting, orchards, dairies, market gardens and brickmaking works.
In the 1860’s the part of the Canning Valley region now known as Roleystone was a haunt of Western Australia’s most famous bushranger, Moondyne Joe.
During the early 1900’s planting of orchards grew at an increasing rate in Roleystone and Karragullen, with property brochures extolling the virtues of the beautiful scenery and fertile valley soils. This was a time of Italian migration into the district.
