Our first day in Fremantle! We woke early but had to wait for Nortons’ Disk Doctor to finish running on the laptop before setting out to see the world. There was also this strange watery stuff falling from the sky – some called it rain, but we weren’t sure it, was so long since we had seen it! By mid-morning Nortons’ had finished and the rain had eased so we walked down the hill to the CBD. We passed at least 3 op-shops on the way – this end of Freo is really geared to backpackers.
After a look around Elizabeth’s Secondhand Bookshop we found the Tourist Information Centre where we picked up yet more brochures and made an invaluable purchase, a map of Perth and surrounding suburbs! The guide in the store pointed out for us a likely route to Floreate which is where the Perth Wildcats’ office is located. More about this later!
Next stop was Dick Smith Electronics as the laptop’s 4GB hard drive was almost full with the honeymoon photos so far, and we were only just over half way through our trip. We had intended to buy a memory stick, but caught sight of something which looked much better, a 20GB pocket external hard drive for $200. Unfortunately the store was out of stock, and it would take three days for one to be sent in from another store, so the clerk looked up for us the addresses of other stores which were showing they had stock of the hard drive.
Our next challenge was to find the Fremantle location of Bayswater car rental. We walked past the Woolshed and on past abandoned wool store sheds which were yet to be restored, dodging showers, until we found Queen Victoria St and the car rental store. We hadn’t intended to hire a car until we had figured out which day we wanted to drive ourselves to Margaret River, but we had seen Bayswater advertising rentals from $20 per day for seven day hires, so figured it would be worth hiring a car now as multiple days would give us a cheaper rate. We ended up with a Toyota Corolla for three and a bit days for $182 including insurance and 500km per day.
Once we picked up the car we headed off on our most important mission for the Perth leg of our trip. We navigated up the coast road past Cottesloe to Floreate and the Perry Lakes Stadium which is where the Perth Wildcats basketball team’s office is located. Daniel there parted with his cherished Sydney 2000 Olympics basketball, leaving it in the Wildcats’ office for Andrew Vlahov, Luc Longley and Paul Rogers to add their signatures – after this there will only be a couple more to get to complete the entire team! It would be fantastic if we can pick it up again before we fly out later this week, but we’ll have to be lucky as Luc only comes into the office every now and then. We have left an Express Post envelope filled out with our address with the ball so it can be mailed back to us later once all the signatures are on it.
Then it was on to another suburb, Osborne Park, in search of the Dick Smith Electronics for the external hard drive. We noticed a strange thing about Perth maps – it seems that you get to a spot on a Perth map before you know it, whereas in Sydney it would take half an hour to reach a similar point on the map! We dodged another shower running into the store, what is this rain stuff? Luckily the hard drives were in stock so we picked one up, a whole 20GB, thank goodness or we’d have to start deleting pics!
What to do now? As we were on the Perth side of the Swan River we decided to go to Kings Park – Kings Park Perth, that is! Kings Park is a 400+ hectare park set on high ground just across the Swan River from Perth CBD with views over the river and city. Over two thirds of the park is natural bushland. In the remainder can be found the Western Australian Botanical Gardens, the State War Memorial and a number of other monuments and a memorial avenue planted with eucalypts.
Once again the map had us there much sooner than anticipated. Our first priority was lunch at the Kiosk, for a change Daniel had the seafood craving, so had a seafood basket and Helen had a roast beef and salad sandwich. The seafood basket took some time but was finally ready and we walked over to the cenotaph to eat on the grass overlooking the Swan River and the city of Perth. It also gave us a great view of the black clouds rolling in from the South West and the curtains of rain falling from them! Luckily this shower swung east and passed us so we were able to finish lunch without getting wet.
After lunch Daniel took photos of the view whilst Helen went back to the information centre for maps of the Park. We looked over the maps and decided to take the Lotterywest Federation Walkway, a path through the Botanical Gardens including an elevated section above the tree canopy. Just as we set off another shower swept in – this time it didn’t swing past and we sheltered under some trees until it had past. Unfortunately the paper daisies Daniel had wanted to photograph were thinking of closing up after the shower. Helen suggested that we keep walking and take the photo on the way back.
We made our way up the Walkway through the Botanical Gardens, stopping along the way to dodge more showers and for Daniel to take photos. The elevated walkway was pretty cool, although slippery with the rain. Once down the other side we wandered on through the grevillea and hakea plantations on to sections representative of the various regions of WA – sandplains, wheatbelt, Darling Scarp, Southwest.
The Sandplains region had some nice wildflowers and also had some examples of Australia’s largest gum flower whose name escapes us. The tree itself is not large, maybe up to 3m high and seemed to have more of a bush-like growth pattern rather than a tree in that the somewhat sparse stiff branches seemed to grow out quite close to the ground rather than having a distinct trunk with the branches growing out of the trunk. The leaves are silver. The flower buds are large, maybe an inch and a half across. The flowers are just huge, three to four inches wide and are red tipped with gold. We walked around looking for examples of the flowers which were in a good position to photograph, low down, in good light and close to a path so we could access them without stepping off the path as there were many delicate wildflowers planted all around them.
We went past the water gardens and a set of five cast iron sculptures set in one of the ponds, set up by the WA Women’s Suffrage group. A section of the gardens was fenced off and being set up for the Wildflower Festival, which starts on Thursday. There is so much to see, I don’t think we will make it back to see what was in the fenced off section. We wandered back through the banksia plantation, but it mustn’t be banksia season as most of the spikes looked dead.
We finally made it back to the spot where Daniel had wanted to take photos but was interrupted by the rain, but by now the flowers he had wanted to photograph had all closed up in the many rain showers. We headed back to the car in yet another shower to navigate back to Fremantle. The driver of the shuttle bus to Freo from the airport had cheerfully told us that the rain in Perth didn’t last long. So far he’s been sort of right – the showers haven’t lasted too long but they keep coming back for us!
It was now about 4pm so we headed straight for Freemantle Prison and bought tickets for a guided tour. Our guide was Linda, from Scotland. We were the only two Aussies in the tour, the rest were three Japanese women who didn’t speak English and their male guide who did speak English! The women all had hand-held digital recordings, so each time we reached a designated stop in the tour they would punch in the number of the stop and listen to a recording of the tour information for that point.
Fremantle prison was built in 1850 by convicts brought out to help construct the WA infrastructure. It was used continuously from it’s completion until 1991. One of the reasons it was decommissioned was the conditions – for example, there are no toilets in the cells, just a bucket, and no heating or cooling, so temperatures in the cells could reach over 50°C in summer or freezing in winter. Prisoners were locked in from 4.15 at night until 6.45 the next morning.
Linda our guide took us through the procedure for when prisoners arrived, then we stepped out into the prison yard. As soon as we stepped out here Helen felt uneasy and on edge and this persisted throughout the one hour tour. Linda took us through the cells, a typical prison day, then through the huge kitchens and out into a series of yards for each of the prison divisions, then on to the Church (apparently it is common to have weddings here!). One of the early convicts, a signwriter, was commissioned to paint the panels at the front of the Church, which contain the Lord’s Prayer and the ten commandments. The sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” is here written as “Thou shalt not commit murder” – according to Linda, a bit of license as executions were performed at the prison.
We went on to a picture of the results of a riot in 1988. As part of the riot the prisoners on the upper of the four tiers set light to everything they could and the fires caused a significant amount of damage. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the fire engines which arrived couldn’t fit through the prison gates, so they had to call in smaller trucks. One of the reasons for the riot was to draw attention to the living conditions of the inmates (remember the prison was decommissioned just three years later, in 1991). Interestingly, Linda told us that she often had visitors on the tours who had spent time at the prison, either as a guard or as an inmate. Some had even been part of the group who had started the riot!
We went on to the tripod where prisoners were tied to be flogged with a cat-o-nine tails and then it was on to the solitary confinement cells. These are small, cold, solid rooms with nothing but a small window set high up on the wall. There is no furniture. The door to each cell is locked behind another door, made of solid Jarrah studded with iron nails. The double doors meant that inmates wouldn’t even hear anyone walking along the corridor – it was total sensory deprivation. Cell number 1, the cell to the immediate left of the door as one entered the cell block, was the least desirable cell, as this is where prisoners about to be executed were brought in the hours before their death. They were given their last meal and a ration of brandy before being hung at 8am on a Monday morning. Linda showed us the execution room. There was a noose in place, and a little black wooden chair for those prisoners who were unable to stand. The trap doors were dropped open. Helen didn’t admit it to anyone but she nearly felt sick. Forty four prisoners were executed here, all of whom were accused of taking at least one life.
The final part of the tour took us on through the administration hall. Under a glass case were some artefacts, including a copy of a letter written by one of the prisoners in the 19th century, but as it was quite late there wasn’t time to read it.
We had intended to find somewhere to watch the sun set into the Indian Ocean, but as the rain had now set in we didn’t like our chances of seeing anything like a sunset so headed back to our unit. Here Daniel set about investigating if the new external hard drive would work without additional hardware. Helen was still very uneasy and on edge from the prison tour. Looking over brochures trying to figure out how to drive to Margaret River didn’t take her mind off anything at all.
We finally headed off to look for dinner, in the car as it was still rainy. The last time Daniel had – briefly - been in Fremantle it had been in the company of Tom, Steve and others following the end of a CAPA ACM. They had gone to a pub/brewery somewhere in Fremantle with the intention of sampling every beer. They started with Redbacks, and Daniel never moved on to sample anything else. Now, after driving through the CBD, around the Fishing Harbour and down the Cappucino Strip we found a pub which Daniel thought looked and sounded familiar. After hunting for a car park we walked up to the Sail and Anchor pub. As we got closer it looked more familiar to Daniel. We went in, up the sweeping wooden stair case, ordered from the upstairs bar and went out onto the wide balcony and took a seat overlooking the main street and the Fremantle Markets. This was exactly where Daniel had sat after the ACM!
As we poured over our scantly maps, trying to figure out how to get from Fremantle to a road which would head towards Margaret River Daniel had a Redback, on tap. After the prison experience Helen headed for the hard stuff and had an Irish coffee. Our meals came, a pepper steak for Daniel and the “Sail Plate” for Helen. This was a mixture of slices of chorizo sausage, crumbed fresh sardine fillets (only 2!), olives, a gloriously smooth feta which was like chunks of cream, salad, toasted Turkish bread and an eggplant dip and virgin olive oil for dipping. Heavenly! Finally Helen could start to shake off the prison blues.
