The place formerly known as Dago Bay is a tiny beach now between the disused Boom Protection Jetty and the slipways, just to the north of the South Mole.
Google Maps contemporary GPS photo of the bay between two disused jetties.
Note the area being used for parking two cars just south of the large jetty at the bottom of the photo. That was the site of the South Mole Resort, a 2019 installation of [[../arts/artists/johns/index.html|Jesse Lee Johns]]' Commonwealth of New Bayswater. For more photos of the resort, and an interview with JLJ, see the FSN page.
The guardian of the gate left the padlock off one day, allowing me to get in to take a couple of photos. Bit of a worry that the sand is pink. Maybe the name should be changed to DayGlo Bay.
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Before there was sheltered mooring in the Fishingboat Harbour, fishermen (who were mostly of Italian and Portuguese origin) would moor their fishing boats in the shelter of the South Mole, whence the name, referring to Italians. With the advent of WW2, the area was taken up by defence structures, including the Boom Defence Jetty and the southern slipways. In the 1913 photo above the bay may be discerned to the left of centre, behind the fishing boats. Click/tap for larger size.
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Ross Shardlow's concept drawing of the 2005 [[../books/slipway/index.html|Slipways Development Concept]], a report prepared by the ad hoc Fremantle Slipways Group, featuring Dago Bay at the centre, and retaining both existing jetties.
References and Links
B/w photograph G. Sands, A., c. 1913, courtesy Fremantle City Library ref. no. 1694D (it is a panorama of which this is only the one quarter on the right-hand side).
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 October, 2021 and hosted at freotopia.org/places/dagobay.html (it was last updated on 15 April, 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.