FREMANTLE PORT

 The port of Fremantle, minutes walk from the city itself, is full of stories:

- a fishing & gathering place for the Noongar people

- created by the brilliant CY O'Connor (more about him later) by blowing up a rocky bar that prevented access to the Swan River

- the site of WA's only major riot over the use of 'black leg' workers to unload a ship in 1919 during which one man died

- the starting point of a new life in Australia for thousands of migrants

- the largest submarine port in the southern hemisphere during World War II

- a near-disaster in 1945 where a ship caught fire next to a ship full of munitions and there was fear that if the latter caught fire, half of Fremantle would be destroyed

- battles over the introduction of container shipping in the 1970s

- and the battles continue with the live sheep export including signs up and down Leach Highway (near us) during the recent Federal elections saying 'keep the sheep' which in fact meant send them away live!


And so it goes. Susan and I knew some of the stories but some we learnt when we went on a free walk of the Port provided by a couple of passionate volunteers. The Fremantle Port Authority is doing a great job in preserving many of the historic wharf buildings and there's also art work wherever you turn - mostly by an Italian sculptor Pietro Porcelli. I even rather like the 1960s Port Authority building. Of course it doesn't sit well with the traditional buildings and it's rather brutalist in look but it's well designed to capture sea breezes and provide shelter from the sun in days before air-conditioning and it's interior foyer has beautiful jarrah and wandin wood floors, mosaics made by local Italian craftsmen and an impressive mosaic art work of a boy on a dolphin. 

I promised to tell you more about CY O'Connor. He was brilliant Irish engineer who contributed immeasurably to Western Australia through the design of the port, upgrading of the rail network, the creation of Mundaring Weir and the longest water pipe line (566 kilometres) in the country, from the weir to Kalgoorlie. However, in a classic tale of 'tall poppy syndrome', the media attacked O'Connor and he committed suicide before the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme was officially opened. Wikipedia also has a story that wasn't part of the history when I was growing up: that the Noongar people, unhappy about the destruction of the limestone bar across the Swan River, 'sang' him to madness which lead to his death. If you're interested in finding about more about this story, check this documentary Constructing Australia: Pipe Dreams.

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