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See also Freshwater Bay Convict Hiring Depot.
Freshwater Bay
Freshwater Bay is in a bend in the Swan River which borders the suburbs of Peppermint Grove, Claremont, and Dalkeith. According to Wikipedia, which cites Malcolm Albrook, it was named after Freshwater Bay and Freshwater, Isle of Wight by Henry Charles Prinsep (1844-1922), who had a riverside family holiday cottage there, The Chine. Chine Place, Mosman Park, very likely gets its name from Prinsep's cottage.
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Photo by Alfred Pickering c. 1900, courtesy of SLWA, call number 011508D (from Facebook). Click/tap for larger size.
Bolton & Gregory:
Freshwater Bay was an attractive site, even to the eye of a newcomer habituated to the gentle contours of English scenery. Aborigines knew it as a campsite of plentiful spring water, abundant fishing and the resort of a constantly changing skein of waterfowl—duck, teal, pelicans—to say nothing of numerous land birds in the forests of jarrah, marri and tuart that swept back along the gentle slopes surrounding it. ...
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In applying for the land at the head of Freshwater Bay, [[../people/butlerjohn.html|Butler]] was not merely responding to the charms of a pretty site. Judging from the large quantity of liquor he brought with him from England he probably had it in mind to turn innkeeper, and this must have strengthened his interest in securing land strategically sited on a main road leading out of Perth. For his purposes the head of Freshwater Bay would be a prime location because it was almost exactly halfway between Fremantle and Perth. Besides, while there were a number of possible routes for a road between the two towns, any route on the north side of the Swan would have to pass along the ridge immediately north of Freshwater Bay. Any detour further inland would bring the track to an obstacle in the form of a low-lying hollow densely covered with tea-tree and blackboy and inclined to be swampy in winter.
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Claremont river beach near the Osborne Hotel steps (the caption reads 'Osborne Beach') c. 1895-1900, courtesy SLWA (from Facebook). Photograph by [[../people/pickeringalfred.html|Alfred Pickering]]. Click/tap for larger size to see the steps in the middle background, with the [[../hotels/osborne.html|Osborne Hotel]] tower on the central skyline.
References and Links
Bolton, Geoffrey & Jenny Gregory 1999, Claremont: A History, UWAP.
Page for [[../people/pickeringalfred.html|Alfred Pickering]].
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 16 December, 2020 and hosted at freotopia.org/places/freshwaterbay.html (it was last updated on 15 April, 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.