Is Mindarie Dive open again?

Get a wettie, fins, snorkel and mask.  Hire the rest till you are sure you want to keep diving.  Things like tanks and reg sets have an annual cost in the terms of hydros and reg servicing.

Also keep an eye out for used good used gear.  Sometimes you get lucky and get to save a bundle.

Not many options left north of the river, you either have SSI at Perth dive academy, Hookah in wangara and PADI with Diving frontiers as far as I know. I can't comment on PDA or hookah as all my training was done through mindarie and DF and no complaints on either. Not sure on PDA hillarys or hookah but at dive frontiers you'll do two of your open water dives at rotto if that floats your boat.

Like alfred said get your course done and hire for a while till your sure you'll stick to it and you'll get more of an idea of what you need and want. People/shops will tell you to only buy your gear once and go top notch, reality is you wont know what you want until you've started diving regularly and the first kit you buy almost certainly wont be your last if you become a keen diver so no need to spend big $$ straight away.

A good starting point for a wettie for summer would be a one piece 5mm steamer, try on a few different masks and get a comfy fit that seals perfectly on your face. Fins, cressi frogs come to mind as a good no frills starter fin that are pretty cheap but quality brand to get you started and are a good go between for both snorkelling and diving.

The extra cost of hiring your fins mask and wettie would be minimal if any ontop of your course costs with bcd and regs hire. You could always purchase something after your course once your comfortable picking out something.

Yep as the guys said above get the wettie mask and fins but hire the rest for a while, and do it from different shops as they hire different brands so you can get a feel for what you are more comfortable using... I did my PADI with dolphin dive in freo and they let me use different gear each day so I could see which stuff I liked best...

Gumtree and the Quokka is full of cheap stuff that has only been used a few times and then the person realised they can't be bothered to dive anymore...

I haven't yet, but you should maybe look at joining a diving club as there will be groups of divers willing to let you tag along with them and help you gain experience and show you some good dive sites...

there are a few diving forums too: waundersea.com and wadivers.com.au have a look through those...

Good luck...