Fremantle

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Saturday 8th May - Auckland → Fremantle

As we always claim that our trip begins when we leave home, we thought that we'd better begin this trips blog from home too. Not that there is ever a lot to say about packing up and driving down to Auckland and heading out to the airport. The same with flights, this one was average. Our CS host had offered to pick us up from the airport, partly as he was at his girlfriends nearby and partly as he doesn't rate the public transport from the airport back to Perth or Freo. What he didn't mention was the service in the airport! Fair enough, its an old airport and looks it, it obviously wasn't designed for the amount of people coming through these days. But the staff hardly make up for it. The immigration guy was nice enough, told us that a name and town was enough on the address section of the arrivals form. The guy checking everyone out before customs though had different ideas. He was stopping everyone and coming up with some fault or something they needed more info on. He wanted full name, address and phone number, even if we were only staying a night or two in this place then wouldn't be contactable through them again. And for everyone he stopped (which was everyone!!), two more would join the end of the queue waiting to get out. We can at least credit him with being thorough, even if picky! Even the MAF dog wasn't playing the game, being more interested in sniffing Julius and Lulu on our clothes than sniffing our bags.

But anyway, Pauli picked us up as promised and we headed back to his place, via the chippy for some dinner.

Sunday 9th May - Fremantle (or Freo as its generally known)

Some CS hosts leave you to get on with things on your own, and some make the time and effort to show you round. Pauli is one of the latter. He spent the day showing us around Freo and generally keeping us entertained.

He took us to a couple of beaches on the way into town (he lives in a suburb about 20 minutes south of the city centre), where we were introduced to the “Fremantle Doctor”, a cool wind coming in off the sea. This was to get stronger as the day went on. The first beach was the type of place we need to remember for the future. It had big grassy areas and free electric bbqs, as well as the sand and sea.

From there we headed into the city. First stop was the Fremantle Markets, originally opened in 1897 and reopened in 1975. It was full of people slowly wandering past stalls of everything from fresh produce to tourist junk. From there we wandered past some of the older buildings, to the Round House, the oldest public building in Freo. Built in 1831, it was originally the local prison before being used as a holding place for Aboriginal prisoners on their way to Rottnest island. To the Noongar people, the first settlers thousands of years ago, the Round House is a sacred place due to the amount of their people killed there. We didn't go in, but braved the wind and and a look round the outside and out to the port area.

Next was the other market building, a place called Shed E down at the port. This is, as it may sound, an old port building converted into a tourist trap. We pretty much ignored the stalls of t-shirts, magnets, postcards etc and headed for the food court for some lunch.

After lunch we had a look round the WA Maritime Museum, really good, before grabbing a SIM card and heading home via the supermarket. We hope the prices in this supermarket were only because it was a small one, not because food is expensive here. We only picked up some essentials, we'll find somewhere else for more!

Monday 10th May - Freo, Rottnest Island

Having read back over what we wrote about yesterday and realised that it was a bit of a boring “we went here then here” type monologue, we are going to try better for the rest of this trip. But please excuse us if we regress back into bad (boring?) habits.

Last night Pauli said to us 'see you in the morning' as he headed out. We figured this meant that he'd be late home and we'd be curled up asleep. But when we got up, he still wasn't home. Slightly concerned, we got ourselves dressed and fed ready to go to Rottnest Island, thinking we'd need to find the local bus stop. But no, “see you in the morning” was meant to be taken much more literally. He hadn't planned on coming home last night at all! But true to his word, he did come back and take us into Freo to get the ferry.

Rottnest Island was discovered (or rediscovered) by a Dutch guy called William de Vlamingh in 1696. We say rediscovered as there have been signs that the Aborigines were there 7000 years ago. At that time, it had been a hill on a coastal plain before being cut off by rising seas. The noongar people knew the island as Wadjemup. (“Up” means water, “bup” means fresh water, like the suburb we are staying in, Yangebup, we thought Pauli said “lup” was salt water, and we arent sure right now what “mup” is.) When de Vlamingh landed, the island was uninhabited, unless you count the large numbers of Quokka. These were mistaken for large rats, and the island was named “Rotte-nest” or Rats nest. The Rottnest settlement was established in 1838 as a prison for Aborigines from the mainland, with prisoners there till 1920. The island is also a sacred place for the Noongar as many died there.

We saw our first quokka while walking back down from Vlaminghs Lookout, they were hiding under bushes snoozing away.

We took Pauli's advice and walked north from the settlement at Thomson Bay, passing a lighthouse on our way to several beaches. We'd brought snorkelling gear with us, but the water was just a little chilly this morning. The place was much more commercialised than we realised, with rental units everywhere, spoiling the otherwise lovely beaches. We knew there were heaps of places for rent in the settlements, but not along the beaches too. We missed the sting rays that were meant to be in the water off Longreach Bay, but did see another pelican.

Just after the 'settlement' at Geordie Bay - read big bunch of baches - we took a small track inland past a bunch of lakes. These lakes were all tinged pink to one degree or another. This is due to them being saline, more than the ocean, and being full of pink saline loving algae. We were almost expecting to see flamingoes, these lakes reminded us of places in South America and Africa! We saw a few more quokka under the trees and some birds - shelducks and stilts - on the lakes. We were aiming for Oliver Hill and the old WW2 gun battery there.

Like all gun emplacements, this one was up a hill, and of course the sun had decided to come out and the wind die down, so it was a bit of a hot slog up there. We had a quick look round the gun (one of a pair of 9.2” guns) and found a bench with a great view for some lunch. Cue wind. We finished our lunch while walking down to the entrance to the tunnels in the hillside. Down there we found the usual magazine, powder room, engine room etc and a few displays of wartime bits and pieces.

The ferry back to Freo apparently timed its arrival badly, despite being a scheduled service that left on time, and we got held up waiting for a large, slow container ship to leave the river mouth. We snuck in quickly before the next one got too close.

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Photos

Colin contemplating the ocean
There was a lovely looking hole down below, but the water was too rough to consider going in

Comments

[Darelle]

Sounds like you guys are having fun, as usual! Your belly looks fantastically gorgeous!!!! You are brave walking around in the heat, hope you aren't getting swollen sore feet. Can't wait for you to start emailing me again to keep me entertained but your blogs will do in the time being

[thetravelbugtribe]

Just about to post a couple more Darelle, enjoy!