The regional park was re-named in 2008 after Banyowla, who was a Noongar elder at the time of European settlement.

The purpose of these regional parks is to serve as urban havens to preserve and restore cultural heritage and valuable ecosystems as well as to encourage sustainable nature-based recreation activities.

[1] The concept of regional spaces in Western Australia open to the public was first proposed in 1955, when the Stephenson-Hepburn Report recommended preserving private land for future public use in what would become the Perth Metropolitan Region in 1963.

The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) identified areas of significant conservation, landscape and recreation value in a report in 1983.

[4] Both Banyowla, after whom the park is now named, and Captain Theophilus Tighe Ellis, whom the Ellis Brook Valley is named for, were involved in the 1834 Pinjarra massacre, the former as a victim and the latter as a perpetrator.