22 September 2005 (Day 17)
Today was our real sightseeing day in Fremantle! Finally we had woken to a clear morning without drizzle and set off in the car to South Terrace, the “Cappuccino Strip” for a late breakfast. We checked out a few cafes and a second-hand bookshop before deciding on Gino’s for breky, on the premise that if there was a crowd there was a good chance the food was good. It certainly worked this time – the coffee was great and so was breakfast, the Gino’s Special (Italian sausages, eggs , tomato, bacon and thick buttered toast) for Daniel and thick eggy pancakes topped generously with slices of the biggest, juiciest, tastiest strawberries and a side pot of cream for Helen. If you are ever looking for breakfast in Freo we’d definitely recommend Gino’s!
As we still had parking we had a bit of a stroll around before picking up the car and moving down to the Shipwreck Museum on Marine Terrace. We walked in 5 minutes before a tour was due, which ended up being a tour of just the two of us with the guide. The main focus of the museum is the four Dutch shipwrecks from the Albrohos Islands, as these are the source of most of their material.
The primary shipwreck and the subject of the tour was the barque Batavia. The guide started by setting the scene in Amsterdam in 1599, and the circumstances leading to the formation of the Dutch East India Trading Company. In around 1628 or ’29 the Batavia was filled for her maiden voyage with trade goods such as chests of silver coins, bolts of silk, art works as well as a stone portico for the Governor’s residence in Batavia (now Jakarta). Against superstition, she also carried around 30 passengers, women and children, traditionally bad luck on a voyage. The rest of those on board were the crew, supervised by the charismatic but crooked Cornelius, and soldiers.
The Batavia sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, pulled in to Madagascar for a spell, then headed for the strong Southern current towards Australia before tacking North towards her ultimate goal in the Indonesian Archipelago. Unfortunately, like many ships to come, she came too close to the treacherous Western Australian coast and ran aground on one of the Albrahos Islands. The captain, who had been in bed ill, ordered the trade goods to be jettisoned over the side but the ship was beyond saving so the passengers were sent off to land on lifeboats. The next day the captain set off with some of his crew to see if he could find food and water. Cornelius and his band of cronies decided to stay on board the Batavia and reportedly lived it up on the remains of the stores and alcohol until she broke up and they were forced onto the island.
The captain couldn’t find sufficient food and water on the islands, nor on the dry and barren looking mainland so decided to head to Batavia (Jakarta) to get help for the survivors. Meanwhile, Cornelius persuaded the soldiers to separate off to another island in search of supplies and commenced a systematic decimation of the survivors in an effort to rule them and also to get at one of the beautiful female passengers. Eventually the soldiers found out about Cornelius’ murders by means of escapees. At the same time, both Cornelius and the soldiers saw the captain returning in another barque (severely chastised by the Governor, who was extremely displeased that all the trade goods were in the sea instead of under his control and who had ordered the captain to recover the goods).
Both Cornelius and the captain of the soldiers raced in their little boats to the unsuspecting captain, Cornelius with the intention of seizing control of the barque and the retrieved trade goods, the soldiers to warn the Batavia’s captain. The soldiers got there first, and when Cornelius and his men tried to board the barque they were seized and arrested. After three weeks of taking evidence Cornelius and his men were tried and executed on the island before the captain and shipwrecked passengers and soldiers returned to Batavia.
We spent some time looking at the partial reconstruction of the Batavia, from planks recovered from near the stern portside. It is an impressive sight to walk through the glass doors into a dimly lit room and see the dark timbers looming above our heads.
We headed across the train tracks to the Fishing Harbour for a quick lunch at McDonalds before going on to the Whalers Tunnel, a tunnel dug in the early 1800’s by the whaling companies under through the dunes between the main beach and the main road to facilitate transport between the two. The Tunnel is also dug under our next stop, the Round House. This was the first official building works in WA. It was constructed in the 1850’s (?) as a prison and after Fremantle Prison was constructed was used as the Police lock-up. Helen was relieved that, while there was the same sense of horror at being locked away, the Round House did not give her the same horrible feeling as Fremantle Prison, possibly because it was quite crowded when we went in. There is a great view straight down main street from its only entry.
The Round House closed at 3.30 and we walked over to the docks to the Maritime Museum as Daniel was keen to visit the Submarine Ovens. Unfortunately the sub was closed for cleaning and maintenance as the Perth school holidays were about to start at the end of the week. We decided to look around the museum as we couldn’t explore the submarine. We were only able to access the upper level as the lower level was also closed prior to the school holidays.
After walking around the museum we needed a rest. We started to walk back towards the car and diverted onto Bathers Beach for a rest. As the sky had been mainly clear all day we hoped we might finally be able to see the sun set into the Indian Ocean before flying out the following day. On the way back to the apartment Daniel dropped Helen off near the shopping centre to look for a cooler bag to take our Margaret River cheese with us to Adelaide as we didn’t have any hope of getting through the remaining 4 whole cheeses before we left.
At 5.30 we headed back over the bridge to Port Beach North Fremantle to wait for the sunset. Daniel got himself set up with the camera on the tripod, dug himself a hole in the sand to be able to access the viewfinder, and we waited and surveyed the lowering sun. We had our doubts as to whether this would work tonight, as there was still a pretty heavy band of cloud on the horizon. Would the sun be able to shine through the cloud and set it alight, or would the cloud just swallow it? As we watched and Daniel snapped and the sun sank we noticed one of the large ships out in the ocean heading South – right across our sunset! The sun slipped lower and lower, the ship powered across our view and finally passed us by heading for the Fremantle Naval Base. Unfortunately after some goldy show the heavy cloud won out over the sun and the sunset we had been hoping for never happened.
Our next goal was dinner. This was our last night in Fremantle so we hoped to have our Margaret River white over a fresh seafood platter. We went back to the apartment to change out of our damp and sandy clothes and drove to the Fishing Harbour to see what seafood platters were on offer. It was a tough decision. We decided on The Mussel Bar, although as they didn’t accept byo we had to sustain ourselves on Redback on tap.
First came out complimentary house baked bread with dips, an artichoke and parmesan one and a sort of creamy slightly curried eggplant dip. Then the seafood platter: grilled WA lobster, oysters kilpatrick, BBQ’d prawns, spiced calamari with a roasted tomato dipping sauce, seared scallops in half shells, a whole baby Fremantle snapper panfried, set standing up in the centre of the plate and drizzled with aioli. And, being The Mussel Bar, the platter of course featured a bowl of mussels. We chose a traditional French style broth of white wine and herbs.
Nice as the seafood platter was we decided it rated third on our list of Seafood Platters We Have Scoffed. The Hamilton Island platter is coming second for the sheer freshness of the seafood, the incredible size of the fat king prawns and the experience of everything being cooked to absolute perfection. This last was slightly lacking in The Mussel Bar experience, with the lobster being definitely overcooked. The mussels, on the other hand, were cooked beautifully, we’ve never experienced such tender, plump little mussels before.
And so ended our gourmet day in Freo.
As we still had parking we had a bit of a stroll around before picking up the car and moving down to the Shipwreck Museum on Marine Terrace. We walked in 5 minutes before a tour was due, which ended up being a tour of just the two of us with the guide. The main focus of the museum is the four Dutch shipwrecks from the Albrohos Islands, as these are the source of most of their material.
The primary shipwreck and the subject of the tour was the barque Batavia. The guide started by setting the scene in Amsterdam in 1599, and the circumstances leading to the formation of the Dutch East India Trading Company. In around 1628 or ’29 the Batavia was filled for her maiden voyage with trade goods such as chests of silver coins, bolts of silk, art works as well as a stone portico for the Governor’s residence in Batavia (now Jakarta). Against superstition, she also carried around 30 passengers, women and children, traditionally bad luck on a voyage. The rest of those on board were the crew, supervised by the charismatic but crooked Cornelius, and soldiers.
The Batavia sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, pulled in to Madagascar for a spell, then headed for the strong Southern current towards Australia before tacking North towards her ultimate goal in the Indonesian Archipelago. Unfortunately, like many ships to come, she came too close to the treacherous Western Australian coast and ran aground on one of the Albrahos Islands. The captain, who had been in bed ill, ordered the trade goods to be jettisoned over the side but the ship was beyond saving so the passengers were sent off to land on lifeboats. The next day the captain set off with some of his crew to see if he could find food and water. Cornelius and his band of cronies decided to stay on board the Batavia and reportedly lived it up on the remains of the stores and alcohol until she broke up and they were forced onto the island.
The captain couldn’t find sufficient food and water on the islands, nor on the dry and barren looking mainland so decided to head to Batavia (Jakarta) to get help for the survivors. Meanwhile, Cornelius persuaded the soldiers to separate off to another island in search of supplies and commenced a systematic decimation of the survivors in an effort to rule them and also to get at one of the beautiful female passengers. Eventually the soldiers found out about Cornelius’ murders by means of escapees. At the same time, both Cornelius and the soldiers saw the captain returning in another barque (severely chastised by the Governor, who was extremely displeased that all the trade goods were in the sea instead of under his control and who had ordered the captain to recover the goods).
Both Cornelius and the captain of the soldiers raced in their little boats to the unsuspecting captain, Cornelius with the intention of seizing control of the barque and the retrieved trade goods, the soldiers to warn the Batavia’s captain. The soldiers got there first, and when Cornelius and his men tried to board the barque they were seized and arrested. After three weeks of taking evidence Cornelius and his men were tried and executed on the island before the captain and shipwrecked passengers and soldiers returned to Batavia.
We spent some time looking at the partial reconstruction of the Batavia, from planks recovered from near the stern portside. It is an impressive sight to walk through the glass doors into a dimly lit room and see the dark timbers looming above our heads.
We headed across the train tracks to the Fishing Harbour for a quick lunch at McDonalds before going on to the Whalers Tunnel, a tunnel dug in the early 1800’s by the whaling companies under through the dunes between the main beach and the main road to facilitate transport between the two. The Tunnel is also dug under our next stop, the Round House. This was the first official building works in WA. It was constructed in the 1850’s (?) as a prison and after Fremantle Prison was constructed was used as the Police lock-up. Helen was relieved that, while there was the same sense of horror at being locked away, the Round House did not give her the same horrible feeling as Fremantle Prison, possibly because it was quite crowded when we went in. There is a great view straight down main street from its only entry.
The Round House closed at 3.30 and we walked over to the docks to the Maritime Museum as Daniel was keen to visit the Submarine Ovens. Unfortunately the sub was closed for cleaning and maintenance as the Perth school holidays were about to start at the end of the week. We decided to look around the museum as we couldn’t explore the submarine. We were only able to access the upper level as the lower level was also closed prior to the school holidays.
After walking around the museum we needed a rest. We started to walk back towards the car and diverted onto Bathers Beach for a rest. As the sky had been mainly clear all day we hoped we might finally be able to see the sun set into the Indian Ocean before flying out the following day. On the way back to the apartment Daniel dropped Helen off near the shopping centre to look for a cooler bag to take our Margaret River cheese with us to Adelaide as we didn’t have any hope of getting through the remaining 4 whole cheeses before we left.
At 5.30 we headed back over the bridge to Port Beach North Fremantle to wait for the sunset. Daniel got himself set up with the camera on the tripod, dug himself a hole in the sand to be able to access the viewfinder, and we waited and surveyed the lowering sun. We had our doubts as to whether this would work tonight, as there was still a pretty heavy band of cloud on the horizon. Would the sun be able to shine through the cloud and set it alight, or would the cloud just swallow it? As we watched and Daniel snapped and the sun sank we noticed one of the large ships out in the ocean heading South – right across our sunset! The sun slipped lower and lower, the ship powered across our view and finally passed us by heading for the Fremantle Naval Base. Unfortunately after some goldy show the heavy cloud won out over the sun and the sunset we had been hoping for never happened.
Our next goal was dinner. This was our last night in Fremantle so we hoped to have our Margaret River white over a fresh seafood platter. We went back to the apartment to change out of our damp and sandy clothes and drove to the Fishing Harbour to see what seafood platters were on offer. It was a tough decision. We decided on The Mussel Bar, although as they didn’t accept byo we had to sustain ourselves on Redback on tap.
First came out complimentary house baked bread with dips, an artichoke and parmesan one and a sort of creamy slightly curried eggplant dip. Then the seafood platter: grilled WA lobster, oysters kilpatrick, BBQ’d prawns, spiced calamari with a roasted tomato dipping sauce, seared scallops in half shells, a whole baby Fremantle snapper panfried, set standing up in the centre of the plate and drizzled with aioli. And, being The Mussel Bar, the platter of course featured a bowl of mussels. We chose a traditional French style broth of white wine and herbs.
Nice as the seafood platter was we decided it rated third on our list of Seafood Platters We Have Scoffed. The Hamilton Island platter is coming second for the sheer freshness of the seafood, the incredible size of the fat king prawns and the experience of everything being cooked to absolute perfection. This last was slightly lacking in The Mussel Bar experience, with the lobster being definitely overcooked. The mussels, on the other hand, were cooked beautifully, we’ve never experienced such tender, plump little mussels before.
And so ended our gourmet day in Freo.
posted by Daniel & Helen at
7:50 AM
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