Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

A visit to the Fremantle Roundhouse

Yesterday afternoon we undertook an expedition to downtown Fremantle with our younger kids. My wife had seen a promotional feature in the local newspaper for a steam engine workshop adjacent to the Maritime Museum. It's operated by old-codger volunteer enthusiasts. They plug air hoses into the equipment instead of live steam. It was all locked up when we got there within the advertised time frame. Apparently the volunteers had better things to do.

Fremantle has been having a photographic festival over the past month or two and there have been several venues around the town hosting small free exhibitions. There was a display at the Maritime Museum proper. A man at the main door accusingly pointed to my camera hanging from my neck and said no photos were allowed. He confirmed the photo display was free.

As we headed for the free photo display we were again stopped. A woman said we could only go to the free photo display if we bought tickets for the entire museum for our family. That was enough for us. The place was too embarrassing. We politely departed.

Near to the museum is Western Australia's oldest building, the Roundhouse prison. It's very small. The numbers of nineteenth century inmates were kept manageable by either hanging them or sending them to the offshore facility on Rottnest Island. The first victim of the noose was John Gavin a 15 year-old Parkhurst boy accused of murdering the son of a settler. A botched execution was carried out on 6 April 1844 in public view at the front of the Roundhouse. His body was buried in an unmarked grave in sand dunes to the south. Most Fremantle executions were carried out in the much larger Fremantle prison on the other side of town. It was built with convict labour in the mid-1850s. Plenty of executions were also carried out at other places in the then British colony.

Volunteer old-codgers look after the Roundhouse too. One of their daily tasks is to fire a replica cannon chained to the Arthur's Head clifftop on the western side of the Roundhouse. This takes place at 1pm and is free to watch. The event is a revival of a time checking service for shipmasters of the past. Coinciding with the cannon explosion, a black ball covered with plastic sheeting is dropped a short distance from a masthead above.

The replica cannon used to be owned by the Fremantle Dockers AFL football club and fired at home games on Subiaco oval about ten years ago. Local anti-football residents complained that it rattled windows and set off car alarms, so it was banned.

There's a good view to the southwest from the Roundhouse. (We have so many good views in Fremantle.) The following image was taken from where the cannon is chained down to stop vandals hurling it over the cliff. In the foreground is Bathers' Beach. The state Labor government wants to redevelop the area, but met with vigorous local community opposition in early 2008. The politicians and their cronies are still scheming behind closed doors.

Unlike the Maritime Museum, tourists can enter the Roundhouse and take all the photos they wish. We didn't bother yesterday.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

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Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!