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Weighbridge
The weighbridge at the corner of Cliff and Phillimore Streets, in the middle of a traffice roundabout system which is crossed by a major railway line, was built in 1921, to replace the original one from 1897. According to the Library's place name index, Pilling Place in Beaconsfield was named for W. Pilling, who 'was an employee of Fremantle City Council for twenty-four years as officer in charge of the weighbridge'. As Pilling died in 1925, it would have been the 1897 original version that he operated. The weighbridge currently in operation is on the North Wharf, where the container trucks go to load/unload.
In Council documents the weighbridge buildings are called '2 Phillimore Street'. Council had approved that it be repurposed as a bar. Cr Hannah Fitzhardinge was in favour of the idea in 2016, before she was elected mayor. It's the tiny pair of buildings in the middle of this snap:
I happened to be able to catch the Google Maps car near the weighbridge. The image below was taken by the car, and shows me taking the photo - on an iPhone 5 on 21 August 2014.
It's not very clear, so you have to trust me when I tell you that that's me taking the top photo. If not me, you can trust the very clever Iain Fraser, who somehow found the photo in the Google archives. ... By the way, just think about many photos like that are stored in silos somewhere. The car takes a photo every few seconds. How many such cars are there in the world? How many photos have they all taken in the last six years? It's a very large number.
It was before Council 23 May 2018.
Stephen Pollock's story (right) is from the Fremantle Herald, 8 October 2016: 9.
I hope Cr Fitzhardinge didn't say 'laying empty'.
Below, it's the tiny number 2 in the middle, again from Google Maps, this time from above:
And this time from Google Earth:
Again, there's a number 2 on the little building in the middle of the roundabout, just next to a major railway line. Is a bar here a good idea?
The building is tiny, especially set against the mighty Dalgety Building - nearly uncovered in its new MSC splendour, as it was when I took the photo in 2017.
The little building is currently unoccupied and being repaired, and the Council is looking for a tenant — possibly yet another purveyor of refreshments.
The business bit.
As the Customs House has the street address 4-8 Phillimore St, this is 2 Phillimore St. The numbering is complicated by the Fremantle Ports building having the address 1 Cliff St, and the weighbridge is in a line between the Ports building and Cliff St. It's a very complicated corner.
An early photograph (date and source unknown) of the corner of Phillimore and Cliff Sts. Where the horses are, on the right, must be approximately the present location of the weighbridge. There was a lot of traffic even then.
UPDATE. At the end of 2018, Roel Loopers reports that the bar idea has been dropped, but he doesn't know of any other current proposals for its use. In 2016, Roel had earlier questioned the bar idea.
The scales inside the weighbridge building in 2018: try to ignore the reflection I couldn't avoid.
In 2020, the weighbridge is being used for bicycle hire. Photo courtesy of Roel Loopers.
References and Links
The current Fremantle Ports weighbridge.
My page for the Cleopatra Hotel shows me again being snapped by the Google car.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 15 June, 2016 and hosted at freotopia.org/buildings/weighbridge.html (it was last updated on 19 November, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.