Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

The Fremantle railway yard

Living within sight of the crane-tops on the Fremantle wharves we are frequent visitors to the port and have seen a lot of changes over the years. Sadly the place has lost a lot of its former dynamism. It used to be known for its large working class population - the thousands of men who kept the wharves, railway and any number of other tasks which where essential to a fully operational port. A port which was in essence the gateway to Western Australia.

Nowadays this intensive human activity is absent. Cargo-containerisation ensured that the word 'lumper' has slipped from common usage. There are no more gangs of lumpers working in Fremantle. Just a few lonely individuals driving cranes and forklifts. The place has become akin to an occupational desert as far as the traditional working class is concerned.

Similarly with the railways. I'm old enough to have experienced the end of the age of steam. Fremantle used to be a steam-engine lovers' paradise. The central area in my panorama above was packed with branching railway lines leading onto the wharf, plus steam locos, goods wagons of every description and all the necessary infrastructure to keep everything going. There was plenty of noise too. I can particularly remember the rattling of an old coal elevator where the steam engines stopped to have their coal tenders refilled.

There was a place adjacent to the coal elevator where the engines had their boiler innards cleaned. The large circular fronts of the locos swung open on hinges to allow access. I've since learned the unfortunate workers probably also received unhealthy lungfulls of asbestos fibres.

Across the way, the Fremantle railway station used to be much larger than the single platform affair now. Below is another historical image I found online. Both were taken in the early nineteenth century before I was born and are from the impoverished State Archive collection.

The same area looks pretty different in the picture I took a few days ago. All electric and only one platform beneath an uninspiring shed. If you click to enlarge the image you'll discover a single railway employee lurking behind a pole with his hands in his pockets.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

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.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

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!