Members of the royal family have visited Fremantle on a number of occasions.
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1869: Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh
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1881: Prince George (Edward VII)
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1881: Prince George (Edward VII)
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1901: Duke & Duchess of Cornwall and York (later King George V and Queen Mary)
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1920: David, Prince of Wales (Edward VIII)
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1927: Prince Albert (George VI)
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1944: Prince Philip (Philip of Greece/Philip Mountbatten)
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1954: Queen Elizabeth II. Due to an outbreak of poliomyelitis in Western Australia, the Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, insisted that the royal party sleep on SS Gothic and eat only food prepared on the ship.
Other visits followed later. In 1977 HM was at the port in front of the FPA building.
On 1 April 1966, the Queen Mother arrived in Fremantle to open the Exhibition Hall, the new council building in King's Square.
Her Majesty had travelled from Government House with an escort of ten police motorcycles in a cavalcade of vehicles led by the Chief Inspector of Police.
Along the way the route was lined in places with schoolchildren, and patients from the Home of Peace, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, the Repatriation General Hospital, and the Salvation Army Eventide Home.
She arrived into a bustling port city with thousands of lumpers, a port whose chief commodity was oil, and which catered for up to 200,000 ship passengers a year.
As she exited her vehicle in King's Square, she was greeted by the legendary Mayor Sir Frederick Samson and his wife Mrs Laurie.
It was a stunning coup to get Her Royal Highness to open the council's new King's Square building. (John Dowson, [[../society/index.html|Fremantle Society]] newsletter 15 April 2020; edited)
John Dowson wrote about this visit again in the newsletter for 1 November 2021.
References and Links
Hitchcock, J.K. 1929, [[../hitchcock.html|The History of Fremantle]], The Front Gate of Australia, 1829-1929, Fremantle City Council.
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 4 October, 2017 and hosted at freotopia.org/events/royalvisits.html (it was last updated on 21 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.