It is located 36 kilometres (22 mi) north of Perth's central business district, and forms part of the City of Wanneroo local government area.

[7] A town also named Mindarie, in the Murray Mallee region of South Australia, claims origin from a Dieri word meaning "festival to invoke peace".

[8][9] The area was initially gazetted as "Clarkson" by the Shire of Wanneroo in 1979, with the name Mindarie being allocated to the adjacent locality directly east.

[13] Other early settlers, Henry Cooper and his brothers, built two lime kilns at Mindarie in 1932 after the closure of their quarries in Wembley.

The kilns provided work for up to thirty-two labourers,[14] who settled in Mindarie in makeshift jarrah shacks, and are commonly held as a symbol of the diversification of industry brought on by the Great Depression at the time.

They are regarded as sites of architectural interest, due to their skilled, vernacular design and their coastal location minutes away from the Indian Ocean, unusual for lime-burning operations in the Wanneroo area.

[16] After the closure of the lime kilns, John Clarkson sold the Mindarie Pastoral Company leases in 1952, and the area remained unpopulated and unused until 1981, when Smith Corporation purchased 316 hectares of land there for $5.5 million.

In July 1984, the company announced plans to develop the land into "Mindarie Keys", a $28 million marina and resort complex designed by James Christou & Partners, to be ready in time for the 1987 America's Cup in Fremantle.

[18] In 1988, Tamala Park was gazetted from land formerly part of southern Mindarie, and was set aside for refuse disposal, as well as public open space.

[7] Due to the environmental and planning concerns surrounding the marina project, it did not receive final approval from the State Government until 1986,[19] which was too late for construction to finish before the America's Cup defence began.

During construction however, Smith Corporation and its joint venture partners ran into several problems, including massive cost overruns, unrealistic estimates of the land value and poor sales of the residential subdivisions surrounding the marina, brought on by the late 1980s recession.

However, the aforementioned problems ended with Smith Corporation losing control of the project to their financiers, Beneficial Finance, who stalled further development and expenditure to focus solely on selling all remaining residential lots.

[21] The project eventually fell into the hands of receivers after the collapse of Beneficial Finance's parent company, the State Bank of South Australia, in 1991.

[25] Although the land is part of Mindarie and Clarkson at present, Satterley, the developers, intend for the estate to eventually be re-gazetted as its own suburb.

Mindarie contains a substantial British-born population of 31.27%, a disproportionately high figure compared to the surrounding coastal area, as well as the Australian national average of 5%.

There are two minor shopping precincts in the northern and southern extremes of Mindarie, which include two service stations, various restaurants and take-away franchises (such as McDonald's and Red Rooster) and Basil's, an independent grocery store.

The arterial highway Marmion Avenue also runs parallel to the freeway alongside Mindarie's suburb boundary, linking to Yanchep in the outer north.

[37] Anchorage Drive South, Rothesay Heights and Bellport Parade act as the main backbone distributor roads throughout Mindarie.

This is often attributed to Mindarie's reasonably affluent coastal part in the west, while the east is predominantly "mortgage belt" families, in line with other surrounding areas.