Fremantle Park Club Sport and Community Centre

From February 2020 the Fremantle Park Sport and Community Centre organisation accommodated the Tennis, Bowls, and Workers Clubs in a undistinguished new building on Ellen Street on land which was formerly one of the bowling greens.

End 2023, the organisation added one more word to its full title: it is now apparently the Fremantle Park Club Sport and Community Centre — presumably so that it can be called Fremantle Park Club for 'short' – and the website now has the domain name fremantleparkclub.com.au. As everything in Fremantle sooner or later gets shortened to Freo, I predicted in 2019 that the building and the organisation would be generally known as 'Freo Park'. It will never be one club, as Tennis and Bowls are twain that will never meet.

The 'Club' is governed by a nine-person management committee comprising three members from each of the founding clubs.
The committee in 2022 (when the information was last available on the internet) was:
Chair: Steve Hannah (Workers Club)
Deputy: Brian Ciccotosto (Bowling Club)
Secretary: Ellis Griffiths (Workers Club)
Treasurer: Keith Bowden (Bowling Club)
Members:
Phil Bayley, Vivienne McKellar (Tennis Club)
John O'Brien (Bowling Club)
Don Whittington (Workers Club)
The members of the management committee are nominated by the management committees of the three clubs, and these nominations are endorsed at the annual general meeting of the 'Club'.
The building was closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The building was officially 'opened' by the mayor on Monday 12 October 2020. Only the Centre board members were present, plus a couple of random politicians.
The foundation management committee was: Laurie Apps (chair), Don Whittington (deputy chair), Matthew Ngui (secretary), Keith Bowden (treasurer), Phil Bayley, Ellis Griffiths, Tricia Hille, Geoff Paganoni, Gillian Street

Photo taken 2 April 2019 of some of the planners, before the building was opened. From left: Cr Adin Lang, Don Whittington (Workers President), Mick Bell (Workers VP), Lawrence Apps (Tennis President), Keith Bowden (Bowls VP), Tricia Hille (Tennis Club), Matthew Ngui (Bowls President), Brad Pettitt (mayor).

Opening Ceremony 20 October 2020

The formal opening was a low-key affair, with only the dignitaries and a couple of irrelevant pollies and photographers present, due to COVID restrictions.

From left: Keith Bowden, Ellis Griffith, Tricia Hille, Brad Pettitt (mayor), Don Whittington, Lisa O'Malley MLA (for Bicton), Lawrence Apps, Phil Bayley, Josh Wilson MP.

Closeup of Brad, Don, Lisa. (Photo courtesy Ruth Belben.)

References and Links

Fremantle Park Sport and Community Centre website.

Grant, Steve 2023, 'Park centre calls for council help: but finances stabilise', Fremantle Herald, 15 July: 3.

Freotopia

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 2 February, 2021 and hosted at freotopia.org/clubs/freoparkcentre.html (it was last updated on 12 January, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.