In the early 1980s, Diana Waldron, director of the Perth City Ballet Company, conceived the idea of converting the old quarry into an amphitheatre for stage productions. With the help of her husband Ken, who was an architect, she negotiated her way through much planning, bureaucratic red tape and objection, and was finally given permission to proceed by Perth City Council and the Metropolitan Region Planning Authority. Upon receipt of a $468,000 grant from a Commonwealth Employment programme, which stipulated the use of unemployed labour, construction began. The original intention to use brick was thwarted because there were no bricklayers out of work at the time, so to meet the terms of their funding grant they used other unemployed workers to lay precast concrete blocks. With further funding from the Lotteries Commission (then known as ILDAC) and a number of other interested parties, the project was completed in 1986.
Perth City Council provided little help in the building of the amphitheatre, but they did develop the clustered parking areas and roadways. The access road to the Amphitheatre is now known as Waldron Drive.
The Waldrons also set about rehabilitation of the bushland around the amphitheatre. With CALM’s permission, Ken Waldron collected seeds from plants native to the area, and Alcoa germinated and grew them free of charge, eventually providing over 1,000 seedlings. The large eucalyptus trees now bordering the parking areas are products of this successful environmental initiative.
From 1987 the Quarry Amphitheatre was leased from Perth City Council by the Perth Theatre Trust.
In 1994, with the restructuring of the City of Perth, the Quarry Amphitheatre site was included within the boundaries of the new Town of Cambridge, where it was viewed as “as a cultural centre of great significance”.
In May 1997, at the request of Cambridge Council, the Perth Theatre Trust surrendered its lease (not due to expire until 2007), and the Town of Cambridge assumed responsibility for the Quarry Amphitheatre.
Over the years, the nature of the Quarry Amphitheatre has provided unique maintenance and management challenges. In 1997, following the limestone cliff collapses in East Fremantle and Gracetown, a thorough assessment of the stability of the quarry’s limestone walls was carried out, and a program of regular inspection instituted.
One of their major findings of the investigation was that while small shrubs with fine root systems helped to bind topsoil material, larger shrubs and trees with well-developed root systems were the cause of the many identified cracks throughout the slope face. Remedial work included removal of loose rocks and several large trees and the introduction of cement tell-tails on visible cracks which allow monitoring of movement in the walls.
In 2000 a report was commissioned on “acoustic anomalies” which were causing variable sound levels within the Amphitheatre and some irritation to nearby residents. The problems were found to be caused partly by the type of sound equipment used, and partly by “environmental conditions such as temperature inversions, wind speed and direction, and air temperature”. In 1998/99 drainage problems necessitated rebuilding of the undercroft floor.
In 1998 ownership of Bold Park and its Environs was transferred to the Kings Park and Botanical Gardens Board (now renamed as the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority). However, the Town of Cambridge retained control of several areas within the Park, including the Quarry Amphitheatre and was required to prepare an environmental management plan for these areas, separate from the Bold Park Management Plan. This was completed in 2000 and endorsed by the Minister for the Environment and Department of Environmental Protection.
