Pumpkin Travels Guide to Freo
Everything we did in Fremantle, Perth
✒️ Written by: Abbie
We spent four glorious weeks staying with family in Fremantle, and managed to squeeze in tons of activities. While we enjoyed some awesome days out, camping trips, and explored central Perth itself, we spent the majority of our time local to Freo and here's everything we got up to (plus a couple side quests further afield).
Waterfront Walks
On our first day, we took a stroll through town centre, stopping along the way as the Fremantle International Street Arts Festival was in full swing. Popping out from the narrow streets and onto the coastline, we walked along the seafront, past a small beach where wedding photos were being taken, and walked all the way to South Mole Lighthouse. This was the perfect introduction to the area.
It’s not just the sea that makes a good walk in Freo though, as Swan River weaves its way into the city and provides another perfect track. After checking out the famous rainbow sea containers, we walked from there to Zephyr cafe for lunch. I kept my eyes peeled the whole way for dolphins, and once we sat down at the cafe we were gifted an amazing sight: a pod of dolphins swimming happily inland, while one of them played with a huge fish in the water. We'd never seen anything like this before. Just as we were finishing up our drinks not long after, the pod swam past us again making their way back out to sea.
And of course, I can't talk about waterfront walks without mentioning the sunsets we saw over the sea. Western Australia boasts the best sunsets, as the orange light fades away across the ocean each evening. No matter how many times we watched this spectacle, it was always just as enchanting. This is the perfect time of day to walk along those sandy Freo beaches. Now that we're on the other side of the country as I write this, I'm seriously missing those sunsets and not quite prepared (yet) to get up at the crack of dawn for East Coast sunrises on the beach.
Manning Park
It may just be a scenic urban park with a lovely lake to walk around, but Manning Park holds an extra special place in my heart, because it introduced me to my new favourite bird: the galah. When I saw one for the first time, I think I pointed and screamed “IT’S A PINK BIRD!”
These beautiful birds are everywhere in Australia and I never get tired of seeing them. With the perfect match of pink and grey (one of my fave colour combos) they are so stylish and pretty. I've already got a galah keyring on my bag and galah socks, and I don't intend to stop there.
The park has tons of wildlife and birds, and it makes for a great place to go for a dog walk.
Central Freo
Across many visits, we did all sorts in Freo from grabbing a drink in the cute cafes, experiencing Yo-Chi for the first time (mind blowing frozen yoghurt!), visiting the free library for a writing sesh, and feeling magical in The Pickled Fairy.
We also executed a pretty awesome date night in Freo, starting in the afternoon with a browse in Dangerfield—the coolest clothes shop I've ever been to. Even James loved it, as he sifted through the rails and picked out multiple items for me to try on, ranging from jumpsuits decorated with birds, trousers with quokkas and kookaburras, and dresses with Peter Rabbit-esque bunnies. As it was only a couple days before my birthday, I treated myself to the rabbit dress once I'd found the perfect fit and style. We followed this with an ice cream stop at High St Gelato.
After that, we browsed some more shops and prowled the streets, noticing the amazing murals splashed upon walls and buildings.
Not quite full from the ice cream, we found an Italian place with outdoor seating and the tempting allure of an aperol spritz. The meal was divine, and we finished up just in time for our booking at the Hoyts cinema to see The Drama, which I’d been looking forward to for weeks. It did not disappoint.
One of our other favourite evenings in Freo was when we ventured out in a big group and completed an escape room at Escape Hunt. Crazily, this is the same brand as one of the escape rooms in Leeds I've been to. Even though there were nine of us in total and quite a few beginners, they could still cater to us. We completed a King Arthur themed room which split us into two smaller groups, where we worked together through a window and eventually all escaped at the same time. It was chaos, and pretty difficult, but we did it with a few minutes to spare.
After the escape room, we had a tasty meal at Grill’d (an Aussie burger chain), then hopped across the road to Timezone for some arcade games. We loaded our card with credit, then tapped it on each game we played till it ran dry. We threw basketballs in hoops, rode motorbikes, crushed it at air hockey, unsuccessfully attempted the claw machine, and finished off with a huge game of ‘the floor is lava’ which was especially fun (and tiring). Collecting points throughout, we checked the balance of our points then used them to reward ourselves with toys and sweets before we left. The best things we got were a mini connect four game (perfectly travel sized), and a set of capybara stickers. Truly a fun-filled evening.
Fremantle Prison
This was probably my favourite place of all, which does sound rather bizarre, but how often do you get to tour a prison which was built by transported British Convicts and remained in use as a high-security jail until 1991? Not very often!
As a huge convict transportation nerd, Fremantle Prison became my hunting ground and I managed to fit in three different trips there. We started out with the Behind Bars tour, which focussed on the site’s more recent history as the only high-security prison in Perth until its closure in 1991. The conditions were terrible, as many parts of the building (e.g. lack of toilets) remained unchanged from when it was built over 100 years prior. This led to a riot and fire in 1988 just three years before it would close, and a new prison elsewhere in Perth would open.
In this tour we were also shown the gallows, which is still set up for a hanging and has been since the last one in 1964. This was for murderer Eric Edgar Cooke, and was the last hanging to take place in Western Australia before the act was banned. It was an awfully sad room, and the weight of knowing how many people had been hanged on that very spot was heavy. It’s a weird battle between understanding that these were (usually, not always) dangerous criminals, but that they were still humans and their lives were extinguished right where we stood. In total, 44 people including one woman were hanged in the gallows at Fremantle Prison; tragically, it is widely thought that Martha Rendell may have actually been innocent. We learnt about her story, and the stories of many other inmates—both British convicts and still-alive-today criminals—in the next tour, True Crime.
Martha Rendell was hanged in 1909 for murdering her three stepchildren, but she insisted she was innocent. When the children became ill, she went to a doctor for medication but, as she couldn't read, she didn't know that it was hydrochloric acid she was administering, nor what the correct dose was. Because she'd had an affair with the father of the victims, her community scorned her and this discrimination carried across to the trial and subsequent verdict. The true crime tour was incredibly fascinating but also harrowing to listen to at times, as the prison has held some nasty people including David Birnie, who only died (by suicide in prison) in 2005.
It was our second trip to the prison when, after a morning of true crime, we spent the afternoon going (even further) down under as we descended into the underground tunnels 20 metres below the prison. For this, we first had to be breathalysed, then got all geared up with helmets and harnesses, and climbed down three sets of vertical ladders, connecting our harnesses from one ladder to the next. It was just as scary as some of those true crime stories!
Beneath Fremantle Prison lies a network of tunnels which was built by transported British convicts in order to supply water to the growing colony in Western Australia. Once the whole group successfully made it down the ladders, we started out by wading through the water inside the tunnels—luckily wearing provided wellies. Much of Perth is built on limestone, so the water is essentially rainwater which has drained its way through the entire 20 metres. It was the purest water we would ever encounter, because the tunnels are sealed off from the rest of the world and nothing grows or lives down there; it’s entirely filtered through the rock on its way down. After walking through some of the tunnels, we then piled into little boats and travelled further. It was two to a boat, and we all went down in a skinny line, using our hands to push us against the wall as it was too narrow for paddles. The odd bit of limestone did break off into the water as we pushed through (or collided with the walls, as the people behind us kept doing).
Our final tour of the gaol was Convict Prison, which was all about the original convicts who were transported from Britain and tasked with building the prison itself. When they arrived, after many months aboard a ship, there was literally nowhere big enough to shelter them—hence the building project. The whole reason Perth asked Britain for convicts to begin with, was because the colony was not surviving on its own and they drastically needed more people and manpower. These convicts lived miserable lives, working all hours of the day without any rest. The only time they came across the concept of freedom was through the context of religion, and the church they were forced to attend. They built the prison and many other buildings in Fremantle, and dug out the tunnels so the colony had water. When their work was done and they were released into civilian life, they could only return to the UK if they could afford it, but none of them really had any money. Some of them managed to integrate into life in Perth, but others often became repeat offenders and lived out their days in Fremantle Prison.
This historic site was overwhelming with emotion but absolutely worth the visit(s), and will certainly help me as I continue to edit the draft of my novel about a transported British convict.
Perth Zoo
It might not be in Freo, but an afternoon spent at Perth Zoo is an afternoon well-spent. Although I overall preferred Caversham Wildlife Park, which will get the honour of an entire blog post dedicated to it, Perth Zoo was also brilliant and it was the first time I saw a koala.
We started out at the penguin enclosure, which is home to the little penguin—also known as the fairy penguin. These little guys are bright blue and totally adorable. They are the smallest penguin species in the world and are native to Australia and New Zealand.
After the penguins, we were lucky and overjoyed to see the echidnas burrowing in their den and scrambling around. Again, my first time seeing the incredible animal, and a highlight for James as he has always loved these hedgehog-like creatures. Being rather hedgehog obsessed myself, it was amazing to see something so similar yet so different.
We made our way to the marsupials, weaving through kangaroos and wallabies, to catch the end of the koala talk. The first koala I would set my eyes upon was sitting there, waiting for me, perched precariously on a branch.
We spoke for some time to the member of staff after she finished the koala talk, asking her all kinds of questions about these classic Aussie critters. While she spoke to us, I caught a glimpse of the Tasmanian devil in its enclosure, as it popped out of its hidey hole for a few moments before returning to its lair. I didn’t want to cause a fuss or disrupt the member of staff as she was speaking, so I kept quiet, which was a bit of a mistake because we couldn’t find the Tassie devil again after that, so no one else in our party saw him. Tasmanian devils are incredibly elusive, so we might just have to go to Tasmania to see another one!
The next highlight of the zoo was the numbat. If you’ve never heard of such a thing, prepare yourself for cuteness overload. These small marsupials look a bit like squirrels, but dig their snouts in the ground for termites like an ant-eater, and are striped almost like zebras. We saw one scurrying around its enclosure and became overwhelmed by how adorable it was. They are mostly only found in Western Australia, so it was a proper treat to see one.
And finally, the nocturnal tunnel in the zoo was home to all kinds of nighttime animals, and allowed us to see bilbies running around under a red light. Also marsupials, these bandicoot-esque balls of fur were zooming around excitedly and gave us another case of cuteness overload. Meanwhile, the tawny frogmouth sat elegantly on its perch, staring at the peasants (us) who walked by gawking. A frogmouth is a bit like an owl, but different.
Day Trip to the Pinnacles
Okay, clearly not everything in this post can be found in Fremantle, but if you’re in the area and have time for a daytrip, then the best option is the Pinnacles desert, in Nambung National Park.
Our first stop was Lancelin sand dunes, where we hired a couple of sandboards for an hour and took to the slopes. Standing at the top of the dunes and looking down, sandboard in hand, is kind of terrifying—it’s a long way down and they’re very steep! After watching James’ first few attempts and seeing he was actually able to go quite slow, I braced myself and tried it out, only to find that I couldn’t make the damn thing go any faster than a snail. We definitely weren’t the best at sandboarding, and blamed our boards rather than our skills, resorting to sitting on them and sliding down which at least gave us a bit more speed. Nonetheless, the sand was gorgeous and it was a hot day; it made for an epic experience. The worst part? Walking back up each dune after going down. 🥵
After Lancelin, we made it to the Pinnacles and were so ready to get out of the hot car we’d been inside all day. We had a quick sweep round the visitor centre which, to summarise, basically told us that the Pinnacles are limestone formations, consisting of broken seashells which washed up and formed sand dunes many years ago. How those dunes would one day give way to tall, pointy pillars has been theorised and researched, with no conclusive answer found.
Walking through the Pinnacles is like existing in an alien universe. It's the perfect setting for a sci-fi film, or some kind of apocalypse. Some of the Pinnacles are tiny little stumps, while others tower above and dominate and landscape.
We explored this new world and found the perfect spot, raised on a small hill, to watch the sunset over the sea. The air grew cold around us as the shadows clinging to each pinnacle lengthened, then faded, as the sun disappeared behind a cloud blanketing the ocean. Our walk back to the car was eery in the new darkness, and our eyes couldn't decide whether to gaze at the looming limestone statues or the pink sky behind us. Most people had gone home for the day, so we ambled along like we were the last two people on earth, as if the pinnacles themselves had taken over.
It was a long, dark drive back to Fremantle afterwards, but was worth every second for such an incredible day trip.
Stay tuned for more blog posts about our time in Western Australia, such as Rottnest Island and Margaret River.