6.4.11 – Jails and jailbirds (Fremantle, Western Australia)

Street in Freemantle

6.4.11 – Jails and jailbirds  (Fremantle, Western Australia)

Building in Fremantle

Fremantle lies just south of Perth, and boasts, with some justification, a lot of traditional buildings – elegant balconies, stone frontages.  We jumped on a bus that was pretending to be a tram, as we’ve discovered that this is the best way to get a quick view of a place, and usually a good comic as a driver/tour guide.  This one did not disappoint.  He started by pointing out a statue of John Curtin, a wartime Australian Prime Minister who died in office 1945, and is often said to have been their best Prime Minister ever.  He added that given recent political events, they are thinking of digging him up again. 

Bus/tram, Fremantle

We moved on to the Old Fire Brigade building, now an Indian Restaurant.  ‘How appropriate is that?’ he quipped.  He then took us up to the inevitable view point, on which is a war memorial in the form of a column.  This, he said, had been planned as a tower up which you would climb, with all manner of wonderful facets.  The people of Fremantle contributed handsomely towards this plan – and the Project Manager then ran off with the lot!  So in the end, they got a very nice memorial, but not quite the world-beater that was intended. 

Old Jail with escaped convict at gate

Then we approached the old jail.  This was built by convicts, and operated until its closure in 1991.  Initially, Fremantle was built without convict aid, but the lure of free labour was too much to resist, so the town sent a letter to Britain asking to be granted convict labour.  This was approved, and the letter of reply put on a slow boat to Australia (no Twitter/Facebook then).  Meanwhile, keen to dispatch the requested jailbirds, the powers that be loaded them onto the nearest fast boat, which of course arrived well before the letter did.  Result – a totally unexpected delivery of old lags, for which nothing was ready.  What do you do with a boatload of disgruntled convicts?  The answer - you store them in a disused woolshed and get them to build their own jail.  None too soon, the warders finally arrived, in the shape of ex-Crimean war soldiers – the Pensioner Guards.  Phew. 

In more recent jail history, a prisoner escaped in the 1980’s and managed to stay on the loose, developing a flourishing career in armed robbery in Adelaide.  Popping home a few years later to visit mum, he discovered that the jail was now a tourist attraction, and couldn’t resist going to have a look, and even signed the visitors’ book on the way out – and, no, he wasn’t caught, at least not then.

After all this intensive history, a bit of shopping therapy and a swim in the sea relaxed our overtaxed brains.  (Most of the cells seem to have gone comatose during this long trip).

The evening was great fun – we met Graham (Bill’s cousin Sandra’s son) and his wife Anne-Marie, who emigrated to Perth about five years ago.  Yet more family members we’ve been lucky enough to get to know on this holiday.  The Thai restaurant succeeded in feeding us six meals instead of four, due to an oversight, so we waddled rather than strolled up the path back to our little villa for coffee.  Another excellent day.

Anne-Marie and Graham in our villa