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Freotopia > parks > Booyeembara Park. This is the homepage. See also other pages for the bike track, the amphitheatre, the skatepark, the playground, the helicopter, yachts (and fish), and the 'clubhouse'. And also these pages for the name, and the 1999 masterplan.
Booyeembara Park
The place now known as Booyeembara Park was once a limestone quarry and then used as a rubbish dump, for 'landfill'. In the late 1990s the Montreal Street Open Space Master Plan evolved through a collaborative process with the Montreal Open Space Steering Committee, which included local Noongar elders, community representatives, councillors and landscape architects. In 2000 it was officially named Booyeembara Park; Booyeembara is a Noongar word meaning 'of the limestone hills’, referring to the line of hills parallel to the coast. See below under 'geomorphological narrative' - one of the Park's three axes.
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Booyeembara Park is on the corner of Stevens and Montreal Streets Fremantle and adjacent to the (public) Fremantle Golf Course to the north and the (private) Royal Fremantle Golf Course to the east. In the photo below, one of the RFGC greens can be seen bottom right, and the 17th tee is at the top.
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This area was first a limestone quarry, and then a tip for building material, and then weeds: the Montreal Street Open Space. Proposals for its development as a park were considered in 1993. A summary of the Fremantle Society submission, prepared by Trevor Knowles, is in the newsletter for October 1993. It's striking to see that the item at the very bottom of the 'not desirable' list is a lake - which is perhaps the current Park's most noticeable feature.
What follows are some pages which used to be in the "photos" area of my personal site. This first page shows general snaps of the park.
Master Plan 1999
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I hope you'll be able to view this plan on a screen large enough to see the detail: click/tap for larger size. This is a photograph I took of part of a sign that used to be near the corner of Montreal and Stevens Streets but was removed.
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This is the 2020 replacement. Again: click/tap for larger size. By late 2021 some idiot has 'tagged' this image, so I'm glad I got this snap in time.
It shows some features you'll recognise, like the lines of olive trees, and some of which you may not have been aware, especially the three axes - or 'narratives' - which are supposed to bear the 'meaning' of the Park's layout. Two of them notionally meet at a point on the 17th tee of the RFGC. The third has yet to come into visible existence, tho the Friends of Boo Park are working on it.
The 'geomorphological narrative', 'the making of limestone', is a line from the Montreal Stevens Streets corner to the aforesaid 17th tee. I think it is meant to suggest the progression of the formation of limestone - a carbonate sedimentary rock that is often composed of the skeletal fragments of marine organisms, which over time become forms of calcium carbonate. The first feature, below the lookout, is a spiral which I think is meant to represent a seashell, such as a nautilus. The path leading to the pond passes through artificial banks which are meant to represent sand dunes. Sculptures along the path have seashells embedded in them. The far end of the 'narrative' is a limestone cliff which is as far as the historical quarrying got before it was abandoned.
This is the spiral at the entrance end of the park's principal axis @ 11 October 2021. It's about to be renewed with new planting, as the original vegetation had passed its useby date.
The reverse view, from the park entrance. In the one day between the two photos, plants have been put in the beds between the stones.
The second (northern) 'narrative' axis (next to the driving range) is clearly marked by the lines of the olive trees. It is the 'recycling narrative' - meant to show 'the building of Fremantle'. I can't sum this up in a sentence: you'll have to look at the masterplan.
The third 'narrative' - 'community' - is only just coming to be instituted. It was meant to be a series of gardens beginning at the Stevens Street entrance to the Park, showing changes in the community's self-perception through changes in domestic gardens, in three stages: the traditional garden of the past, the domestic garden of the present, and a future garden in which 'the indigenous landscape is fully embraced'. Hasn't happened yet, but the Friends of Boo Park are active in this area.
Two of the lines of olive trees bottom right. Young trees on the mound in the centre. Update: the two large trees in the middle of the mound were Moreton Bay figs. One of them blew down in a storm, leaving just the one in 2021. That group of tufty grasses bottom left of the photo died, and the area is now just grass.
One of the notable failures was this cypress grove. Over time the trees blew down one by one. The last few were removed in 2021, when the plan is to erect a new 'clubhouse' for the public golf course. The old one was demolished in 2020 as part of the rearrangement of High Street. The clubhouse is also to be a coffeeshop etc. for the public.
As @ 2022 the City Council has no money available to proceed with the project of providing a golf 'clubhouse' - which also leaves the huge public golf course fenced off and unavailable for any use at all (though of course people find their way onto it for walking the dog or hitting the odd golf ball or even riding bikes). It's a scandalous waste of a recreational resource which could have been avoided with better planning. People could at least be allowed to walk on the course.
Four years later than two photos above, the olive trees have been pruned into their mature shapes, and a view appears under the branches. Update 2021: all of the olive trees have survived (unlike the cypresses). The southern line has been aggressively pruned down to a good picking height. The northern line will be similarly pruned in another year, after being allowed to fruit once more.
The lake or pond at the centre. It's an artificial hollow lined with blue plastic sheeting. Guys who used to sail their model yachts on it called it the 'swamp' (or so one of them told me) so they were Swampies.
What is now the Park was first a quarry, and then a rubbish tip. When I first moved to the area in 1992, I enjoyed walking on the fill which by then covered the former rubbish tip, the contents of which of course remain beneath the surface.
Another photo from the RFGC 17th tee. This one shows what is intended as a sort of traditional meeting place and story-telling area. In 2021 it is not used for anything, and awaits more development - like the 'billagong', which was hollowed out and then just abandoned for the time being, pending the finance becoming available.
Locals would recognise Jan ter Horst's house on the skyline, right, and Garden Island, a naval base, dimly perceptible in the far distance. The area in the foreground is fenced and the (planted) native vegetation is doing well as a result. In 2021, most of the acacias have reached the ends of their brief lives and are dead or falling apart. Replanting continues, however, to take place, by community members such as the Friends of the park.
I've taken many photos of the lake.
There are two people under the tree.
The piles that hold up the jetty on the western side are mirrored by six similar piles on the eastern side, holding up nothing, suggesting the other end of an unbuilt bridge. Since I took that photo, one of the two trees in the centre has died, perhaps of old age.
One of my favourites. I managed to get a bird on each of the nugatory piles, plus a bunch of ducks swimming north.
The 'Swampies' have put some buoys in the lake to make a course around which to race. In 2021 they have all lost their flags. No-one (such as the people who put them there) is taking reponsibility for their appearance, so they are just whitish balls which spoil the overall appearance of the pond.
I wonder what will happen if I shoot straight into the sunlight? Oh ... OK.
Just another snap.
One day, a guy was experimenting with a coracle he'd made based on a design thousands of years old, and sent this kid out onto the lake to see if it would float. It did - no leaks.
This perfect rainbow wouldn't fit into my viewfinder.
So I had to shoot it in two parts. I have nfi why the sky seems to be a different colour above and below the bow. Something to do with the magic of digital photography, I spose.
My best yachts photo. I hope there's a slight trompe-l'oeil effect. We don't get swans every day, so I was keen to get this pair in. Unfortunately, the light wouldn't cooperate, so they're only getting a bit of reflected, while the boring ducks are getting it direct. Sigh. Also, the swans kept dipping their heads in the water - so I didn't have much choice as to the moment.
The nicest spot is under some trees right near the water.
Michael Booth was a long-term and much-loved teacher at Murdoch University.
His partner, Joan Eveline, donated a bench to the Park in memory of Michael.
Now she has also departed, and I assume that their friends - hers and Michael's - have donated this new plaque, as the old one had become illegible.
... as you can see.
Public Art
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There is no public art in this (large) park, with the exception of something which I assume represents the Wagyl, the Noongar mythical creation spirit Rainbow Serpent. I don't know who made this: please let me know if you do. It is at the entrance to a small grassed area which is surrounded by six structures, which represent the six Nyoongar seasons: Birak, Bunuru, Djeran, Makuru, Djilba and Kambarang.
Apparently this circular grassy area is called the Reconciliation Circle.
At the time of the full moon, the Reconciliation Circle is the venue for a 'community drumming circle and dreaming meditation' event. I took this snap 17 January 2022 of such an event - just before the dancing was to begin:
References and Links
Chauvel, Anna 2021, 'Gathering community: Booyeembara Park', Landscape Australia.
Hughes-Hallett Debra, ed. 2010, Indigenous History of the Swan and Canning Rivers, Swan River Trust.
Ecoscape (Australia), Mary Warinner Landscape Architecture, Space Consultants, Urban Thresholds and Natural Power Systems, Booyeembara Park Master Plan 1999.
City of Fremantle, Booyeembara Park Review 2020, mysay.fremantle.wa.gov.au/52995/widgets/285483/documents/174892
Friends of Booyeembara Park website.
Notes in Fremantle, the newsletter of the Fremantle Society: October 1993 from the time before the Park was laid out.
Master plan - text only. The PDF is available online somewhere - I've forgotten where I found it.
Council page with the 2021 status of the Booyeembara Park Master Plan Implementation.
Rose Wise Pinter was the key person on the Council when the Park was being set up.
David Hutchison's note about the park in Fremantle Walks.
Maria Wilson's article in Fremantle Shipping News, with some photos worth looking at.
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 5 November, 2009 and hosted at freotopia.org/parks/boo/index.html (it was last updated on 28 July, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.