Summer Edition, January 2026
NEXT MEETING:
Norm Marinovich – The history of Croatians in Fremantle
Croatians have had a presence in Fremantle since the early 1800s but never in great numbers. Their contribution to life in Fremantle was initially defined by their background of poverty in their homeland, but later by some of the skills they brought with them and later still by their efforts to integrate into the Australian way of life.
Dalmatia was the poorest part of what was then Yugoslavia, there was not much land, and what was there was very dry and unproductive. The people emigrating were tough and worked hard so they could send money back home to their families. Many immigrants went to the goldfields but by the eve of the First World War groups of Slavs began to settle in Spearwood, the Swan Valley and Fremantle.
Norm and his brother Mike, were born here in Fremantle, their parents having emigrated around 1928. But after the Second World War, like many Slavic people, the family travelled back to Yugoslavia out of concern for their families there, and to help rebuild the country after the war. The constraints of living under Communist rule however, were difficult to tolerate, and the opportunities in Australia offered better prospects for their sons’ future. The family returned to Western Australia in 1952.
70 years later, come listen to Norm tell his story about his life, and the experience of being a Croatian immigrant in Western Australia.
COMING EVENTS:
Norm Marinovich – Fremantle’s Croatian History
Tuesday 24 February 5.00 – 6.00 pm
*Note much shorter time
Fremantle History Centre, Ground Floor, Walyalup Civic Centre
151 High St, Fremantle 6160
See above.
Robert Nicholson - Captain Robert Laurie of Fremantle
Tuesday 24 March 5.00 – 6.00 pm
Fremantle History Centre, Ground Floor, Walyalup Civic Centre
151 High St, Fremantle 6160
A Scottish born sailor, at fifteen Robert Laurie migrated to Australia to join the Adelaide Steamship Company which, in 1880, sent him to Fremantle where he worked as a stevedore before becoming a member of the Legislative Council and first Chairman of the Fremantle Harbour Trust. He fought to achieve proper marine standards to ensure the port attracted the patronage of international shipping.
The author is the great grandson of Captain Laurie. The Hon. Robert Nicholson was born in 1937, his mother Betty, nee Davies, was a granddaughter of Captain Robert Laurie. His grandfather was a solicitor, John Nicholson, who emigrated from Scotland in 1896, establishing a law firm here. One of his sons, Edward, became a partner in 1927, and Edward’s son, Robert, joined the firm when he was admitted as a legal practitioner in 1960.
Robert (Bob) served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of WA from 1988 to 1994. He was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2001 for service to the judiciary, to education and to the community. Then the year after, was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), also for service to the judiciary and the law, to education, and to the community.
He has published a number of research papers before writing the story of his grandfather, ‘Shaping Australia’s West: The Life of John Nicholson’ and then ‘Captain Robert Laurie and the maritime development of Fremantle’ in 2025.
Chris Williams - Green shoots in Fremantle
Chris Williams - Green shoots in Fremantle – the founding of The Greens (WA) Inc and its contribution to the election of Australia’s first Greens Senator, Jo Vallentine
Tuesday 28 April
Venue – to be confirmed
Chris’s talk will focus on the 1985 to 1990 period of the party’s history centred on Fremantle people, the processes and structures they developed and the national context.
MEETING REPORTS
Christmas Party – 23 November 2025
The Army Museum of Western Australia
A blustery, windy day but such a fabulous spread, as always, and good company. About 20 people attended – great to see some new members, and old members we haven’t seen for a while. Many thanks to all those who contributed. A big ‘thank you’ to Fay Campbell for baking and donating most of the raffle prizes – three lovely fruit cakes and a jar of chocolate wafer rolls.
It was a good opportunity for us all to have a quick look at the many fascinating collections held by the Museum. There are weapons dating from the 1820s, displays from the Fremantle Rifle Volunteers in the 1870s and the Boer War, extensive material from both World Wars - medals, uniforms, armaments, and artefacts from the more recent conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq. If one had more time there is also a substantial collection of armoured vehicles, artillery field guns and other military hardware outside around the parade ground. A great end to the year’s events.
From Nonna with Love
Exhibition runs until 20th April 2026. Tickets included with General Admission.
See website for further details: https://visit.museum.wa.gov.au/maritime/nonna-love-stories-tradition-and-triumph
AUSTRALIA DAY
Australia Day marks the 1788 landing of the First Fleet and raising of the Union Jack by Arthur Phillip at Sydney Cove. In modern times the day is promoted by the Australia Day Council and events are run to recognise contributions of Australians to the nation and reflection on the country’s history.
Previously, each State celebrated on a different day - one which acknowledged the founding of their particular State – for example, Foundation Day in Western Australia. After Federation in 1901 there was a move for a national holiday to be named Australia Day and 26 January was selected in 1935, with all states having a public holiday on, or around, that date. It is now observed annually on 26 January. In 1940, however, the first national day was held on Monday 29 January, which was declared a holiday.
The West Australian of 26 January 1940 [p.20] did its best to set the scene prior to the national day.
Just 152 years ago today Captain Arthur Phillip, RN, and the crew of HMS Sirius performed a simple ceremony in Sydney Cove which constituted the formal foundation of Australian settlement. It was the sunny evening of a beautiful day when the few sailors on a lonely shore gathered beneath the flag which had been unfurled and drank to the success of the new colony they had come to establish.
A volley was fired by the marines -and just as the sound finished echoing and re-echoing among the forests and coves of the bay the rest of the First Fleet, which had been left at
Botany Bay while Phillip in the Sirius made a landing, appeared in view. A voyage of eight months' duration was over and 750 British male and female convicts with 200 marines faced the difficult task of starting a new colony.
The Fleet consisted of eleven ships. Besides the Sirius there were the armed tender Supply, three supply ships, Fishburn, Golden Grove and Borradale, and several transports carrying convicts, 752 in all. Phillip, who had gone ahead of the main fleet in the Supply, first sighted the coast of New South Wales on January 3, but because of contrary winds, did not arrive until January 18. He spent the next few days finding a more suitable place for a settlement than Botany Bay.
The article then goes on to advise what would be taking place on the Australia Day Monday holiday (as it is known) in 1940:
A wide variety of sporting fixtures have been arranged for the day. The Western Australian Turf Club will conclude its summer meeting at the Perth racecourse, Belmont, in the afternoon, and in the evening the final of the Fremantle Trotting Cup and other trotting races will be contested at Richmond Park.
There will be a round of first-grade cricket fixtures at various grounds lasting all day, and the State bowls singles championship will be continued at the various metropolitan greens. The annual surf life-saving championships carnival will be conducted throughout the day at Cottesloe by the Surf Life-Saving Association of Australia (WA. State centre), and at night Crawley Baths will be the scene of the second carnival of the Australian swimming championships.
Tennis enthusiasts will be attracted by the concluding matches of the Fremantle District Lawn Tennis Association's annual meeting and the South-West championships conducted by the. Bunbury Tennis Club at Bunbury. At Pingelly there will be a motor racing carnival at which the Great Southern Speed Classic will be the chief event.
Fine weather was forecast and many holidaymakers would have noted an advertisement in the Daily News [p.17] on Saturday 27th, regarding the Zephyr’s trips to Rottnest:
The S.S. Zephyr will leave Perth at 10 am and Fremantle at 11.20 am tomorrow and on Monday (Australia Day). On Monday the vessel will make two return trips from Rottnest, the first at 4 pm to Fremantle only, and the second at 7 pm to Fremantle and Perth.
Excursion fares will operate for day visitors to the island on both days.
The West reinforced its message in the Saturday edition, adding that:
… a full round of sporting fixtures has been arranged for what is the first long week-end of the New Year. Special transport facilities will operate to the holiday resorts and sporting fixtures. The Divisional Meteorologist (Mr AG Akeroyd) said last night that, with
an anti-cyclone approaching the west coast, the weather should become gradually finer during the weekend.
Retail stores, butchers' shops, State and Federal Government Departments, banks and insurance offices will be closed on Monday. Fruit and bakers' shops may remain open, but there will be no delivery of bread by employees. Tobacconists' shops may remain open all day, but hairdressers will be open only from 8 a.m. to 11 am. Milk will be delivered as usual.
Service stations in the metropolitan area will be open 7 am to 1 pm. Petrol, oil, spare parts and accessories may not be sold after 1 pm on any public holiday, except in case of unforeseen emergency. Chemists may open between 6.30 pm. and
8 p.m.
Special train services will operate on Monday between Fremantle, Perth, Bellevue, Belmont, Armadale and South Beach, and also on the Mundaring and Upper Darling Range branch line. [West Australian, 27 January 1940, p. 14]
Over the years the Australia Day holiday has continued to be celebrated similarly to how it was in 1940, however it should not be forgotten that the day is not a celebration for all Australians. For indigenous people:
The date marks not pride, but profound loss. It is the anniversary of invasion, dispossession and the beginning of policies that sought to erase us – the world’s oldest continuing culture.
[National Indigenous Times, 26 January 2026, accessed online 27/1/2026]
Folly of Follies: Art and architecture in Fremantle
The corner of Short and Packenham Streets is the site of the Quest Apartment Hotel. The conspicuous blue artwork on top of the building is the work of Perth artist Lorenna Grant and is named the Folly of Follies. The artwork reflects the history of a building, Manning Hall, which stood on the site for 70 years until it was demolished in 1929.
Because of the unusual architecture and the enormous amount of money spent on it, more than £10,000 when it was built in 1858 the local Fremantle residents called it Manning’s Folly or Manning’s Castle.
The man responsible for the building was Charles Alexander Manning. He was a keen amateur astronomer and there was an observatory on the top of the building, adding to its peculiarity. The money lavished on it actually came from the family’s London business, Manning and Co. of High Holborn, a fact his brother Henry, head of the company, was not altogether happy about.
Charles Manning arrived in Fremantle in 1854 from Callao, the port of Lima in Peru where he had spent 24 years running the overseas branch of the family’s business. With the Peruvian Civil War (1856-1858) looming, the prosperity and security of the business was under threat so the family decided to wrap up the operation in Peru and move their interests to Fremantle.
Standing on the south bank of the Swan River (the original shoreline marker is just in front of the present building), the three story building that was ‘Manning’s Folly’ dominated the 1850s streetscape, which at the time consisted of mostly small limestone cottages and houses. The original purpose of the building was to accommodate Indian Army Officers and civil servants on leave from the various wars of the time such as the Indian Mutiny and the Crimean War. As this scheme never eventuated Charles Manning used it as a home for his wife and large family and he lived there until he died in 1869.
The Manning family had a long association with Fremantle. In 1829 Charles’ brother William arrived with the first portable prefabricated houses. The Manning Portable Colonial Cottage was the invention of his father John. The Colonial Chaplain, J.B. Wittenoom purchased one of them for his home.
William had acquired land south of Fremantle on behalf of the family in the 1840s and Charles added to this. The huge Manning estate stretched from Fremantle south to Coogee and inland to Bibra Lake. In 1866 on this land and with the help of convict labour Charles Manning built another large house from the local limestone which was called Davilak. Today it is just a ruin having burnt down in 1960.
The remains of the 13 room mansion and outhouses are on the south west corner of the lake in Manning Park.
Charles Manning was already a wealthy man by the time he arrived in Fremantle. Although he spent just 15 years in the colony he became a leading figure in the small community, one of the ‘Merchant Princes’. Manning was the largest landowner in Fremantle and owned much of the land in what is now the centre of the town. He had many shipping interests in the port including the lucrative pearl fishing industry and also acted as the Consular agent for France. From 1859 till a year before his death he was the Chairman of the Fremantle Town Trust. Manning also founded the Volunteer Rifle Corps and as the Grand Master of the Order of Freemasons he was in a position guaranteed to lead to prosperity in the young colony. On the suggestion of his brother Henry, the London branch of the business supplied the roughly 20,000 tooled Yorkshire flagstones which were used to pave High Street in 1868.
In Peru he had married Joaquina Calero, the daughter of the Spanish Viceroy at Lima. Six years later when she died he married her sister Juanita, who also died before he left Peru. In 1855, a year after he arrived in Fremantle, he was married for a third time to 17 year old Matilda Birkett. Matilda was according to Manning a ‘low emigrant girl’ and much the same age as some of his own children. From three marriages he had a total of 18 children, Matilda producing 7 of them.
Charles Manning although a member of the elite of the colony was not popular with everyone in the community. According to the Perth Gazette he was a ‘bombastic furioso’ in his behaviour, calling people liars and dogs and the like. He apparently was fond of drink and a year before he died Matilda left Manning’s Folly and went to live in the house at Davilak.
On his death in 1869 at the age of 62, the Inquirer and Commercial News reported that ‘Mr. Manning, in common with all men, had his failings, but his good deeds far outweighed them and he has passed from amongst us honoured, respected, and regretted by all classes of the community’. On the day of the funeral flags were flown at half-mast in Fremantle and Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh who arrived in a warship on the day of the funeral ordered the ensign of the ship to be flown half-mast.
Manning’s Folly stood for another 60 years in Fremantle but gradually fell into disrepair. Wallace Bickley lived in it after Charles Manning’s death and then it became a warehouse for Tolley and Sons, wine and spirit merchants. In 1881 it was suggested at a Council meeting that it be restored and used as the Town Hall before the current one was built. The suggestion was not a popular one. By 1928 it was beyond repair and on the verge of collapse. It was replaced by another warehouse the façade of which still stands on the site today.
Lorenna Grant’s vibrant blue artwork on the renovated building was completed in 2016. The intense colour draws attention to the building and hopefully will encourage those with a sense of curiosity to seek out the meaning of the work as a way of opening up the history of times past when Fremantle was a quite different place.
References
Artist Profile - Lorenna Grant | Public Art | DENMAC.
Berson, M. (1978). Cockburn: The Making of a Community. Western Australia. Town of Cockburn.
Brad Pettitt's blog post for 24 October 2016.
Brown, P. M. (1996). The Merchant Princes of Fremantle: The Rise and Decline of a Colonial Elite 1870-1900. Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press.
Daily News, Thursday 30 January 1930.
Daily News, Monday 23 January 1928.
Ewers, J.K. 1971. The Western Gateway: A History of Fremantle, Fremantle City Council.
Fremantle Herald, 11 November 2016.
Herbert, G. 1972. The Portable Colonial Cottage, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Vol.1 No 4.
Hitchcock, JK 1929. The History of Fremantle the Front Gate of Australia, 1829-1929, Fremantle City Council.
Inquirer and Commercial News, July 11 1855.
Perth Gazette, 27 December 1867.
Swan River Guardian, 1 December 1836.
The East and Ellen Street Cuttings
In 1902 the building trade in Fremantle was prosperous, and plasterers, masons and carpenters were in high demand. However, for those men without a trade, the job market was not so bright. Many of the men in Fremantle were unskilled and there was a lot of unemployment. The shipping industry in particular had dropped off, hundreds of men had been discharged from the harbour works, and now the men were pleading for work, their wives and children going hungry [The Western Mail 6th December 1902].
As reported in the West Australian December 6th 1902, yesterday an assembly of 170 unemployed men gathered at Fremantle Park to discuss their situation. In January that year Fremantle Council had made a decision to float a loan of £20,000 for much needed public works which, once underway, would provide employment for most of those seeking work. The Mayor, Mr T. Smith, was sympathetic to the men’s plight and promised to do what he could to speed up the tedious wheels of bureaucracy which were holding up progress.
The Town Engineer, Mr. T.B. Barrett, immediately began arrangements to organise the unemployed into work gangs. One of the first jobs was the cutting down of the top end of Ellen Street leading to Plympton. Development of the ‘highlands to the east’ had been very slow on account of the difficulty of actually getting to the area. The climb up the hill via either High Street or Ellen Street was steep and most unpleasant in the middle of summer or in the driving rain of winter, and vehicular access was impossible [The Mail 30th April 1904].
Ellen Street, as it was then, was left untouched for the benefit of those who had houses there. Immediately to the west of this the hill was to be cut down 20 feet and widened, forming a new road, still to be known as Ellen Street, but with a much gentler gradient. Plans were already underway for the cutting through East Street, the two jobs estimated to provide employment for 50-60 men for at least three to four months. It was proposed to make the Ellen-East Street thoroughfare a bus route to better connect the municipalities of Fremantle and East Fremantle [Western Mail 3rd December 1902].
The Daily News 2nd July 1903 reported: ‘The completion of the work would provide a short cut to Plympton, and help to open up a district which is rapidly growing. Speaking of East-Street, the cutting there is proving a great convenience to the travelling public in connection with that in Ellen Street. Quite a township is springing up at the intersection of these thoroughfares’.
October 1903 the possibility of running trams and electric lighting in the municipalities of East Fremantle and Fremantle was put forward, and representatives of those towns held preliminary meetings to discuss the scheme and to consider the advisability of undertaking the work.
The first Board of the Fremantle Municipal Tramways and Electric Lighting Board was elected 18 June 1904, the enterprise owned jointly by the Fremantle and East Fremantle Municipal Councils. Construction of the lines commenced February 1905; the Mandurah Road line (now South Terrace) and East Fremantle line along Canning Highway completed 11th April 1906.
A second eastern route was felt to be necessary to serve the growing population of East Fremantle, which by this time numbered around 2000. The East Fremantle councillors had originally insisted the line run from East Street down George Street, but experts hired from Sydney argued, at a heated council meeting that ran till midnight, that this was simply not practical and insisted that Marmion Street was by far the better option.
By August 1903 the rails had been laid through the East Fremantle cutting and the East Fremantle Council had widened their side of Marmion Street by 10 feet, so the trams would run in the East Fremantle Municipality instead of the Fremantle Municipality, [The Daily News 1st August 1903].
The Marmion Street line, as it was known, was opened early 1906 and initially ran from the car barn tram depot at the end of High Street, to Duke Street. In 1908 this line was extended further east along Marmion Street, then south down Onslow Street to High Street, where it continued east to serve the golf course and the Fremantle Cemetery at Carrington Street.
Over the following 15 years the barrier erected along the top of the East Street cutting, fell into disrepair. In The Advertiser 22nd July 1921 Cr. Sidebottom stated that ‘the fence was in a dangerous condition. A horse had fallen down there and been killed… The place was undoubtedly dangerous and it was decided the works committee should inspect.’
Two weeks later as reported in The Advertiser 5th August, the Town Engineer told the Town Council: ‘I find that the fence on top of the cutting is defective, 54ft. length is entirely gone, and about 290ft. in another part, several of the posts and railing are missing. To reinstate the fence is estimated to cost £7.’
‘Cr. Sidebottom thought £7 would not build much of a fence. What was wanted was a fence that children could not climb over. (He was assured by Cr. Shepherd this type of fence had not yet come into existence.)’ The committee recommended the necessary repairs be effected.
In 1933 the East Street cutting was in the news once again. ‘Cr. Thornett drew attention to the danger existing…the dilapidated fence and loose stones were a menace to the safety of the people and children using the street. Should children slip, or the road give way, the lives of people would be endangered.’ [Fremantle Advocate 7 Sept. 1933]. A mere three years later East Fremantle Council made a brief announcement in the Fremantle Advocate, 19 March 1936: among council works: ‘East Street Cutting: Fences to be set back, path to be constructed and fence to be erected, £50.’
Hopefully the necessary works were undertaken with a little more haste than the decision-making, however, it seems the ongoing maintenance continued to be neglected. The Daily News 25 May 1946 reported that blacksmith striker William Dean (62) of Holland Street, was found fatally injured on Thursday night (23rd), indicating that he had fallen over a cliff.
‘Detective-Sergeant Cannon inspected the scene thoroughly and found that Dean, while walking home, apparently missed his footing and fell about 20 feet over the cliff to the roadway. Pieces of leather were found adhering to the limestone cliff, and there were also drag marks on Dean’s shoes. Police were satisfied that Dean was not a victim of a hit-run accident.’
Thankfully no further serious mishaps occurred and the next time the cutting appeared in the media was in The Daily News 23 July 1954 when the Government accepted a £6450 tender to begin earthworks in preparation for the new Fremantle high school. ‘The work would involve the removal of 18,000 cubic yards of limestone and earth … [to] provide a suitable area for the erection of the new school. The earthworks would lower the East Street cutting by about 10 feet and the Ellen Street cutting by about 5 feet.’
What could very nearly have been a serious mishap occurred in 2015 when Fremantle Council hired contractors to build a 10 metre limestone wall to retain a small, unstable section along East Street, just below the Forrest Heights flats. The contractors back-filled the gap between the wall and the cliff with dry sand, without anchoring the single brick wall to the rock face. The wall, unsurprisingly, began to crack dangerously and pull away. The wall had to be demolished and the cliff sprayed with liquid concrete. https://heraldonlinejournal.com/2015/05/01/wall-falls/
In November 2020 a parent, walking their child to school, reported some very large chunks of limestone had fallen from the cliff onto the path below. She said the rocks would have killed someone without question, had they fallen on a pedestrian. The repairs were carried out by Fremantle Council, hopefully with a new contractor, during the April school holidays the following year. https://heraldonlinejournal.com/2020/11/13/school-rocks/
This short stretch of road has witnessed quite a few dramas in its 123 year history (and I haven’t even mentioned the problems with drainage!); the patchwork of reinforcing stone, brickwork, concrete and netting, testimony to the difficulty of trying to hold back the forces of nature over the years.
Committee
Theatre
Just an afterthought – I saw advertisements for two upcoming plays that you may be interested in, both showing at the historic art- deco Como Theatre, in South Perth.
Those who came along to last year’s Fremantle Studies Day would remember Leigh Straw’s intriguing story of Audrey Jacob and ‘The Ballroom Murder: A scandal in Perth’, an event in Perth’s history that seems to be gaining attention.
Theatre 180, in collaboration with the Government House Foundation, presents: Arthur Haynes and the Smoking Gun; the incredible true story of a crime that shocked the nation and the courtroom trial which tested the law in Western Australia.
Thursday March 12 11.00am & 7.00pm
Friday March 13 11.00am & 7.00pm
Saturday March 14 2.00pm & 7.00pm
Sunday March 15 5.00pm
The Catalpa is familiar to most people in the Fremantle area. Produced by Theatre 180, in collaboration with the WA Museum, Catalpa: Flight to Freedom tells the incredible true story of perhaps the greatest prison break in Australian history: the escape of six Irish Fenians from the fortress of Fremantle Prison in 1876, on board the American whaleship Catalpa.
The play will be showing at three venues:
Ace Cinemas Rockingham ……… April 29-30
Como Theatre, Como ……… May 14-17
Koorliny Arts Centre, Kwinana ……… June 4
Tickets and more information available at:
Como Theatre
16 Preston St, COMO