Freotopia (called Fremantle Stuff until 2023) is a website that was built and maintained by Garry Gillard about the history of Fremantle. It was established in 2014, and stopped receiving updates when he died in 2024.
Freotopia can be found at https://freotopia.org (previously its domain name was https://fremantlestuff.info).
In 2024 Garry donated its contents to Wikimedia for inclusion in Freopedia, where it joined some material from FreoWiki.
The About page of Freotopia is included here:
The whole content of this site was freely given by me (as my death approached) to Wikimedia to do with as they wish. My site will remain uchanged. Garry Gillard.
Purpose
This site attempts to draw together information and images to do with the history and heritage of Fremantle, not only buildings but also people and places generally.
I am not a historian (nor a web designer); this is just a way of passing my time in retirement. I don't do (much) original research, just draw together the work of others, as Wikipedia does. I endeavour to show all my sources.
There will never be commercial advertising.
I do not claim copyright for any of my own work on this site, but would be grateful for links to the website to acknowledge the source of any borrowings.
I would be grateful for any comments or suggestions.[1]
Origin
This website started in 2014 as a walk around part of the West End. Don Whittington was to lead a tour for Cockburn Council, and he asked me to share some thoughts about a walk starting at Pioneer Park and ending at the Moores Building coffee shop. I thought it might be fun to do this as a webpage, and from that a new website just grew like Topsy. And that was ten years and hundreds of webpages ago.
Society
Don did conduct the walk, and I went on it as well, tho it was a rainy day and there were only about ten punters and Don only did about half of what I'd planned. Don is a life member of the Fremantle Society, and his theme that day was the buildings that the Society had been instrumental in saving.
Library
I have found the Fremantle Library particularly helpful, and take the opportunity to thank the now retired History Librarian, Pam Harris, and her assistant Kristi McNulty. The Heritage Council site has also been useful, and so of course has Wikipedia.
History
The site uses the complete text of Hitchcock's History of Fremantle. As it was published in 1929, it's out of copyright, so I've been able to quote from it at length, as well as providing the whole thing scanned and corrected by me.
I am very grateful to the Hutchison family for permission to include here also the whole of the late David Hutchison's fine book, Fremantle Walks.Disclaimer
Garry Gillard provides this Freotopia website as a service to the public.
Garry Gillard is not responsible for, and expressly disclaims all liability for, damages of any kind arising out of use, reference to, or reliance on any information contained within this website.
While the information contained within this website is continually revised, no guarantee is given that the information provided in this website is correct, complete, and up-to-date.Archive
This website (as fremantlestuff.info) was selected for preservation (in Trove) on 23 February 2022 by the National Library of Australia.
Note
I alone am responsible for (almost) all of the coding on this website. I learnt how to write HTML (mostly) from the internet. Though a couple of friends have (occasionally) helped, I have never had any professional assistance. I thank Dianne Gorman, who got me going with CSS, and Iain Fraser, who fixed a couple of problems, notably with the search engine.
Stats
As @ 20 August 2022, the size of the site is just over 2 GB. God knows how many pages there are: I don't know to find that out. In 2021 the site received 912,206 hits, with 55,673 unique visitors, who visited 72,651 times, and looked 124,457 pages.
Ngala kaaditj Whadjuk moort keyen kaadak nidja Walyalup boodja wer djinang Whadjuk kaaditjin wer nyiting boola yeye
The traditional owners of Walyalup, the Whadjuk Noongar people and their continuing connection to land, sea and community are acknowledged. Respect is paid to their cultures and to elders past and present.
The names Walyalup and Fremantle are interchangeable.
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 21 September, 2015 and hosted at freotopia.org/about.html (it was last updated on 2 June, 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.