Contributors

John Dowson

John Dowson has been a teacher of English and history in Australia, the US, and the UK most of his adult life. In recent years he has focussed on promoting Australian history through publications and lecturing. As a photographic historian his published books include Old Fremantle, Old Fremantle Childhood, Fremantle: the Immigration Story, Fremantle Port, Old Albany, Off to War, and a facsimile of the Western Mail War Souvenir of 1915.

John lives in Fremantle where he served for eight years on the Fremantle Council, four as deputy mayor. He is currently president of The Fremantle Society, a heritage group, while endeavouring to work on several new books, including a photographic history of Perth, a book for young adults on Captain Charles Fremantle, a panorama of early Western Australian art, and a pictorial coverage of two World War One ships, HMAS Sydney, and SMS Emden.

Steve Errington

Dr Steve Errington taught organic chemistry at WAIT/Curtin University for 41 years before retiring as Head of Department in 2009. He is vice president of the Fremantle History Society, has been a member of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society since 1963 and is currently a vice president. He represents the RWAHS on the Council of the National Trust of Australia (WA) and is a voluntary guide at the Round House and on Rottnest Island. His research interests include WA colonial history and the history of WA chemistry, cricket and football. His book Southerners Forever More: the trials and tribulations of South Fremantle's first six decades won the City of Fremantle and Town of East Fremantle Local History Award in 2014. His latest book, Disorderly Proceedings in the Park: Western Australian Football in Colonial Times was published in 2016.

Simon Meath

Simon is a native born Western Australian. Following his primary education in the USA, Spain and the UK, and secondary education in Perth, he completed a BA degree (2001) in Communication Studies at Edith Cowan University (WA) and a BA degree (2006) in History at the University of Western Australia. He was recently awarded a Diploma in Education (Secondary) from Notre Dame University Australia, Fremantle (2010), and is currently completing a Masters in Archaeology at Notre Dame. He is a focused archaeologist with an avid interest in the early colonial world of the 1830s in WA. He has taken part in a number of research projects in the Fremantle area.

Irma Walter

Irma is a retired teacher with an interest in local history. After discovering her own convict origins, she developed an interest in Stephen Montague Stout, the first convict appointed as teacher at Australind, where she now lives. Unlike her own convict g-grandfather, who led an uneventful life on a small market garden near Nabawa in the Northampton area, Stephen Stout from the outset challenged the accepted social mores within the small WA community, with a strong belief in his own abilities.

Michelle McKeough

Michelle McKeough has been working as a professional historian since 1998. Her publications include a history of the W.A Water Police (2001), contributions to various historical journals and she was a contributing author to Voices from the West End (2014). She has recently gained a PhD from Murdoch University on three times of crisis in Fremantle; the Bubonic Plague, the Great War and the Depression Era, on which she was invited to present a paper at Oxford University in July 2016.

Bob Reece

Bob Reece, current Fremantle History Society President, is Professor Emeritus in History at Murdoch, where he taught from 1978 until retirement. His wide research interests range from Aboriginal history to Irish convicts and Sarawak in north-West Borneo. His most recent book is The Invincibles: New Norcia's Aboriginal Cricketers, 1879-1906.

Leigh Straw

Dr Leigh Straw is an academic, historian, and writer. She is a Senior Lecturer in Australian and Aboriginal Studies at the University of Notre Dame Fremantle and Lecturer in History at Edith Cowan University. Leigh’s non-fiction work ‘Drunks, Pests and Harlots’ recently picked up an award at the Fremantle History Awards and features in the former Female Division of Fremantle Prison that has been recently converted into a backpackers hostel called Fremantle Prison YHA. Leigh is currently writing a true crime biography of Sydney underworld figure, Kate Leigh.

Leigh’s other major research project - After the War: World War One and Returned Servicemen in Western Australia - looks at life after the war for returned servicemen and their families.

Leigh’s third fiction - Limestone - is out now. It is the first of three crime novels featuring fictional Fremantle Detective Sergeant Claire Patterson.

Alan Pearson

Alan Pearson is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Australia and the University of New South Wales. He was a professional army officer for over 30 years, and consulted to the Department of Defence for a further ten years. His background is in logistics, specialising in ammunition and explosive devices. He is researching for a book on the St Paul’s Church Honour Board and the men named upon it. This paper draws on some of that research.

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 July, 2018 and hosted at freotopia.org/fhs/fs/9/contributors.html (it was last updated on 27 November, 2022), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.