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Fremantle Stuff > Fremantle Walks > Other sites of interest
Other sites of interest
From Fremantle Walks by David Hutchison, 2006, pp. 195-7.
Army Museum
Architects: Public Works Department. Builder: T F Carrick
The army site, at the northern end of the city, is bounded by Queen Victoria, Tuckfield and Burt Streets and Canning Highway. It includes the Cantonment Hill reserve at the south end of the earlier traffic bridge. Forts had been established at Arthur Head and in North Fremantle in the early twentieth century. This site was chosen for the Artillery Barracks as it lay conveniently about midway between the two fort sites. Construction began in 1910.
Buildings on the site include the barracks, built in two sections (1910, 1913) linked by a section built in the 1930s, a hospital, officer's house 'Gun House' and a quartermaster's store on the Tuckfield Street side; orderly and guardrooms on the Burt Street side; and quarters for married officers and non-commissioned officers along Queen Victoria Street.
Prolonged negotiations involving the Commonwealth Defence Department, the state government and Fremantle City Council regarding the future of the site, which is no longer required by the Defence Department, continue. In 2004 the excellent Army Museum, which relies to a large extent on volunteers, finally obtained a twenty-five year lease on the barracks, with an option for a further twenty-five years. The museum pays a ‘peppercorn rental’. The Defence Department will meet the cost of removing asbestos roofing and the museum will be given $600,000 over three years for renovations. The museum is credited with having the best military collection outside Canberra; it houses a large collection of Western Australian war memorabilia.
In 2005 the future of other buildings and spaces on the large site had not been determined.
Booyeembara Park
The area bounded by High, Carrington, Stevens and Montreal Streets to the east of the city is a large 'A' Class reserve. Approximately two-thirds of it is leased to the Royal Fremantle Golf Club and part is used for a public golf course. The remaining fifteen hectares, in the south-west corner, was used for some years as a public rubbish tip site. There was also a limestone quarry in this area. Work began in 1999 to convert the tip and quarry sites into a park. That work continued in 2005 although by then a great deal had been done. Development was planned to create a ‘mosaic of cultural and physical readings of the site’s past and future story, including geomorphology, Nyoongar culture, recycling of waste and the original bushland.’ Lakes have been created and dense plantings of native trees and shrubs established.
Hilton Precinct
This precinct is east of the city and is bounded by South Street to the north, Stock Road to the east, Winterfold Road to the south and Carrington Street to the west. It is largely a post-World War II Housing Commission development, which was built to house new arrivals, returned service personnel and immigrants. It was planned in the late 1940s as a garden precinct. There is a mix of house styles, including prefabricated houses imported from Austria and others built from local and imported materials. Designs were influenced by the modernist movement in architecture prevailing at the time; they were functional rather than decorative. The precinct was planned to retain its garden nature. Today, relatively mature trees, larger blocks of land and parklands incorporated in the suburb contribute to the fulfilment of the vision of a garden suburb. In 2003 consideration of heritage listing for the precinct or for houses within it was under consideration.
Fremantle Cemetery
The cemetery is to the east of the city, at the intersection of High and Carrington Streets. The cemetery has published a guide to a selection of graves, including those of some Fremantle pioneers and public figures, of two notorious murderers, of the bushranger ‘Moondyne Joe’, of the notorious 'Shiner' Ryan and of 'Bon' Scott, one-time lead singer in the Australian rock group AC/DC.
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 11 January, 2019 and hosted at freotopia.org/fremantlewalks/w10.html (it was last updated on 14 November, 2019), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.