Fremantle

This morning we woke up naturally at 7 because we had gone to bed so early the night before, so we went for a run along the seawall. It was pretty quiet out, but we still passed a decent amount of people and were able to watch the kite boarders and surfers out on the ocean. Luckily, it wasn’t too hilly of a run either, at least compared to my runs in Sydney.

We spent the majority of the day in Fremantle, which is a town down the coast from our hostel, about ten minutes by train. It wasn’t very busy when we got there, but the town definitely picked up speed around lunch. We made a visit to the Roundhouse, which is the oldest building in Western Australia. It’s where “sick” prisoners were kept when Perth housed convicts from Britain. The building is built right on the coast, but since there aren’t any windows inside, the prisoners didn’t exactly get to enjoy the view.

On the way to the Roundhouse

The Roudhouse

To continue our tour of Fremantle’s convict history, we paid a visit to the prison, which was operational from the early 1800s to 1991. We took a guided tour through the cell houses, church, administration offices, and outdoor yards. The treatment of the prisoners really was quite terrible. All of the buildings on the premises and the wall surrounding the prison were built by the original prisoners. Even after everything was built, the prisoners went to work every day to earn their keep and the ability to buy small trinkets from the prison store, such as tobacco, canned goods, or (if they saved up enough) a secondhand color television with terrible reception. The only changes the prison went through over the years were slight, including addition of electricity to the cells (for use between April and November) in the late 1900s. Each cell, by the prison’s closure, had two occupants, but still only one tin for water and one for a toilet. Apparently, prisoners would sometimes confuse the buckets before electricity was installed.

It sounds like the prison was finally closed down because in 1988, the prisoners decided to call attention to themselves. They managed to overpower two guards and unlock all of the cell mates in a division before piling up their mattresses and blankets in the doorway. Since they had two guards as hostages, they decided to demand payment of Hungry Jacks (which is like burger king) for all of the inmates. Surprisingly, they were given their demands and the prisoners released the guards. However, they then decided to set the mattress pile on fire and burnt a hole into the roof of the prison. The fire trucks were called but they couldn’t get them through the gates of the prison as the gates had been built only to accommodate horse and buggies. Some of the prisoners were injured in the fire but no one died. Those who were injured managed to sure the state of Western Australia and won compensation money, contributing to the demise of Fremantle prison for a more modern facility in a neighboring town.

Inside the cells

The Fremantle Prison

The guillotine

The whole tour was rather interesting. It was my mom’s first time visiting a gaol. I seem to manage a visit to them every time I travel, somehow. They are quite fascinating to hear stories about though.

We stopped at Dome for lunch, which appears to be a sort of chain restaurant around here. You order at the counter and they bring your food out to you. I thought the chicken foccaccia we ordered were really good. The iced chocolates they served looked decadent too, but I didn’t get one because the sun was blistering hot (and blinding), which tends to make me stay away from dairy.

Before catching the train into Perth, we stopped at the Fremantle and E-Shed Markets to have a look around. I had found a book written by a local Western Australia in the secondhand bookstore earlier, so I just picked up some postcards of the area to round out my souvenirs for the trip.

In Perth’s central business district, we wandered around a little. It was like a ghost town on a Sunday, but we managed to find Kings Park (which is like Central Park, but a little outside of the city). We were pretty tired from walking all day, so we didn’t make it all the way to the botanical gardens, but we did find a nice outlook over the city and the inlet that Perth surrounds.

On our way back to the train station, we stopped in a couple of smaller parks and by the Bell Tower. It’s probably the weirdest bell tower that I’ve ever seen—a straight blue glass point that shoots up into the sky. Apparently, they play bells there. I really liked the way it was built in the middle of a little fountain though with a boardwalk leading up to it. The chain-link fence surrounding the boardwalk was stuck with locks that looked similar to the locks of love I saw in Italy. Some of them were shaped like bells and others were just basic combination locks, but most of them had writing on them. I’ve always thought it was a really cute idea, but I particularly liked the location of these locks because it seemed so random.

The Bell Tower

Chains outside the Bell Tower

Random Kangaroo Statues

View of Perth

We caught the train back home shortly after dark, exhausted once again. I have no idea how I’m going to manage adjusting to the time zone in New Zealand.