Perth and Fremantle!

Perth & Fremantle!

The flight to Perth was quite a long one - 5 hours. After driving, we'd gotten used to just how large Australia is so we were perfectly happy to sit there and let someone else take us somewhere for once!

We arrived in Perth at about 1am and found ourselves being checked into totally different rooms. Next door to each other, but each with 3 fast-asleep guests in already. We parted ways for the evening and I crept as quietly as I could into my pitch-black room. I removed the torch from my backpack and shoved it into my mouth so that I could use my hands to make the bed. In hostels, you have to make your own bed. And doing so at 1am, without waking the other guests, in the darkness using only a mouth torch is quite a challenge. Somehow, I managed it and promptly failed to sleep at all. You see, Perth YHA is perched on the corner of a train station. While it has great facilities (a gym, a large kitchen, a cinema room, loads of sofas and TV's), it's one major flaw is this train station. Trains come round the corner and have to blare their horns to announce they are coming. It is this horn corner that our rooms faced, so every 10 minutes or so we would be awoken (or kept awake) by an extremely loud, extremely close combination of rail rattling, engine noise and ludicrous horning. Charlotte had an even worse deal. One of the people in her room just HAD to sleep with window open, meaning it was roughly one billion times as loud for her.

I left my room the next morning to find an infuriated and exhausted Charlotte waiting outside. We got our stuff together, had a chat with the people in our rooms, showered and went to explore Perth.

The city from King's Park.

View over the bay from King's Park and, below, the memorial.

We explored King's Park for a while; an enormous park with loads of green space, some botanic gardens and a large glass bridge. We stopped for lunch for a bit and chilled out by the memorial at the café, and had a nice meander around the gardens. We then got the bus back into the town itself.

In town, we visited the cultural centre where there was an ice rink and a museum. The museum was housing a wildlife exhibit which consisted of much taxidermy and various dead things on display, as well as plenty of sea creatures. This left Charlotte feeling rather crabby:

We also checked out an extremely depressing photography exhibition showing never-before-seen photos of devastating incidences, such as plane crashes and violent riots. It was all a bit macabre and interesting in a dark way, but it certainly didn't leave us feeling cheerful.

After exploring Perth a bit more, we stayed one more night before making our way the next day to Fremantle. Fremantle is a short train journey away from Perth, just to the South West. We were due to stay in Fremantle Prison YHA, which had only opened a couple of months ago and was, until 1988, a fully operational prison. There was the option to stay in cells but we stayed in a 10 bedroom dorm in a large room. The facilities were excellent and the whole place was still retaining it's prison feel; it was very atmospheric! Charlotte managed to convince herself we were staying in the execution chamber until I manage to find a map explaining it had previously been, in fact, the kitchen unit. This made her happier.

Fremantle was lovely. Perth, we thought, was a nice enough city but didn't have much character to it. The park was great, but the city itself felt like an inflated Swindon. Lots of pedestrianised areas surrounded by chain shops and more shops, with the odd shopping arcade thrown in. To be fair, in Perth, they were re-building the entire seafront area so that was just one massive construction sight and wasn't aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Maybe we'll go again and see if we like it. 

Fremantle, on the other hand, was great. It had tonnes of character, wide roads, old buildings and a massive, bustling market. We strolled through the market, where I bought a chocolate banana, and then on to the park where I found the most magnificent skatepark (WITH ILLUMINATED HANDRAILS). It made me wish I'd kept my board. There was also a parkour arena, playpark, ferris wheel and ice rink. The local council had clearly put a lot of effort into maintaining entertaining green, outdoor spaces and it was great!

The next day, we ventured up to look for some surf. We took the train, after grabbing breakfast from Woolworths, and then a bit of a walk to Cottesloe Beach where we found...zero surf. We also found a lot of cold and wet people, a lot of seaweed and then it started raining heavily on us so we sheltered in the pavilion.

We decided it probably wasn't worth staying and went back to Fremantle. Upon our return to Fremantle, we decided to take on the free tour around the Little Creatures brewery. Little Creatures is a craft brewery that specialises in Pale Ales (as most craft breweries do). We stocked it at the restaurant I worked at in Mooloolaba, where they'd sent us a crate of 3-year out of date beer! Nonetheless, we took the tour and meandered through the brewing area while trying to listen to the tour guide amongst the clamour of an extremely busy bar and restaurant area. We finished the tour and were rewarded by ponies (small glasses) of free beer! We were allowed to try each of the beers they had on tap, and even Charlotte tried some! The one's she couldn't stomach, I had. This means I drank a lot of different beers very quickly, and not long after was a little dizzy. Regardless, we'd had a nice warm tour and some free beer. Result!

The last day in Fremantle, we visited the prison proper. The YHA was located in the old women's wing, a small section of the main prison. The men's area was much larger and it is this that you can tour through. We took a tour through the main prison with a tour guide and a small group which was fantastic. Our guide, Steve, was clearly a prison warden back when the prison was functioning (it only shut in 1988) and knew absolutely everything and explained and described all the procedures and events in explicit detail.

Old prison uniform

The cell block

Cell block with anti-suicide nets

Kitchen

Yard

Large (extended by knocking through the wall) cell

Cell block

Chapel. The murals were painted by a prisoner.

Cell for arrested police/informants

Standard sized cell. Still functioning in 1988. There were never toilets, even right up to closure they used the slop buckets.

Cell with paintings done by the prisoner

Another cell painting

The gym

Solitary confinement

Lashing post

Execution chamber. Supposedly the time between leaving solitary confinement, walking to the chamber and being hanged here was just 30 seconds. Charlotte stayed outside.

After the tour we took the train back to Perth, where we stayed for one more night in the YHA.