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Fremantle Walk—From the Beginning

The walk commences at the west end of High Street, below the Round House.

Walk through the Whalers Tunnel (1834) to Bathers Beach.

Bathers Bay—where Englishmen arrived to claim the land (again) for the Crown, the monarch at that time being George IV. (The western third of the continent had already been claimed for the British crown in 1827 by Major Lockyer, at Albany—then called Frederick Town).

As is generally known, Fremantle derived its name from Captain Charles H. Fremantle, of H.M.S. Challenger, which anchored off Garden Island on April 25, 1829, three years after Major Lockyer had founded the settlement at Albany. Captain Fremantle landed on Arthur's Head, and on May 2 took formal possession in the name of His Majesty King George IV. The exact spot where he landed was indicated in a despatch to the Admiralty dated October 8, 1829, wherein he said that:-
"The landing took place in a little bay close to the mouth of the river, to the southward of it, being the only landing in that neighbourhood where boats could go with security, the bar at the entrance of the river generally being impassable.”
No doubt that little bay would have been the indentation in the shore between Arthur's Head and the little promontory (Anglesea Point) from which the Long Jetty was later constructed. The landing would have been made somewhere near the western end where later a tunnel was made through the rocky head, and it was there that the first jetty was situated. (Hitchcock: 9-10)

Arthur Head originally extended much further westwards than it does now, having been quarried for its stone for Fremantle buildings. Whalers cut caves in the cliffs to use as storehouses.

While we're here, having just walked through the Whalers Tunnel, we might talk about the whaling industry.

In 1837 the Fremantle Whaling Company, which had been established the previous year, began operations by capturing a whale off Carnac. Long before that American whalers were frequent visitors to those waters and reaped a rich harvest. The day of kerosene had not then dawned and the odoriferous whale-oil in the old-fashioned chimneyless and smoky lamps was the only illuminant except candles. In those days whales frequently came into Fremantle Harbour at certain periods of the year, and for many years whaling was a staple local industry. Probably the industry reached its zenith in the fifties and sixties. The rival crews then were those of John Bateman and Joshua J. Harwood, and when whales were sighted the boats of the two firms were manned immediately, while the townspeople congregated at various vantage points to watch the race for the prizes to be won. During the whaling season the natives came to Fremantle in hordes and feasted to satiety on the scraps after the oil had been boiled from the blubber.
The whalers' storehouses were cut out of the rocky cliffs south [north] of the tunnel, and there were their ranges of furnaces and try-pots. Their long, sharp boats were always kept ready for instant action with oars, harpoons, baskets of coiled line, lances and muffled rowlocks conveying an idea of the energy and activity of the whaling parties in their palm days.
In 1848 the Fremantle Whaling Company ceased operations and the assets were taken over by Patrick Marmion, who continued the business. (Hitchcock 1929: 25; see also page for the Whaling Complex)

The excavation of the tunnel under Arthur's Head was commenced in 1837. It has often been erroneously stated that the tunnel was the work of convicts, but it was completed long before the first batch of convicts arrived, as was also the Round House that stands immediately above it. Another tradition is that the tunnel was cut by whalers to facilitate the transport of barrels of oil, but it is extremely unlikely that the whalers would have carried out such a costly work on Crown property. The more probable story is that the work was done by a detachment of sappers and miners who were stationed at Fremantle at that time, as it was a necessary public undertaking in order to connect the town with the only jetty then existing. (Hitchcock 1929: 25)

Walk back through the tunnel.

The first European residents of Fremantle were 25 men from Captain Charles Fremantle's ship HMS Challenger. The party, led by navy Lieutenant John Henry, landed on 6 May 1829 in the south bay and included Lieutenant George Griffin and ten marines. They put up tents and started building a palisaded fort on the narrow neck below Arthur Head. They also made a garden and set about growing some vegetables.
On 17 June 1829 the men were relieved by troops of the 63rd Regiment who had recently arrived on HMS Sulphur which had accompanied the Parmelia. Commanded by Captain Frederick Irwin, the 63rd set up company headquarters at the fort but in July moved to what became known as Cantonment Hill, about one and a quarter miles from the mouth of the estuary.

From here Ensign Robert Dale drew the site of the future town of Fremantle and this was published in London and distributed with the 24 March 1830 issue of the Foreign Literary Gazette. (Errington 2017: 15)

Walk up the Round House steps.

The Round House was built in 1831 as a jail and residence for the jailor and his family. Despite its name it's a dodecagon: it has twelve sides.

It was designed by Henry Reveley, who saved Percy Bysshe Shelley from drowning in the River Arno. Rather pointlessly, as it turned out, because the poet did later die by drowning when his sailing boat sank.

Where there is some grass south of the Round House there was the first courthouse, which was used for other purposes, such as religious services. It was later the residence of the harbour master, Croke, who complained about the many deficiencies of the building.

North of the Round House where the no. 9 pilot's cottage now stands was the site of the second courthouse. To seaward of that was the first lighthouse.

Freotopia

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 3 September, 2020 and hosted at freotopia.org/westend/walk5.html (it was last updated on 3 May, 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.