We had heard jokes that Western Australia is so far away it was like going to a different country. But we were surprised to learn that we were flying out of the international terminal and had to go through immigration.
Fremantle is just south of Perth and we found our apartment on the marina without any issues. Hungry and tired we stumbled upon a local favorite, Little Creatures Brewery for dinner. The restaurant was almost full but we found a table near the bar. The award-winning pale ale, cider and food were tasty, and the waiter gave us three suggestions for breakfasts (each a local favorite and delicious).
Bathers Beach aka Whalers Beach is a small beach popular in the summertime. Despite copious amounts of seaweed washing ashore, we saw kids playing in the sand.
Nearby was one of our favorite statues, Bella, a lady sunbather sitting on a bench in town and we photographed her at different times of day.
Like other cities in Australia, street art covered many of the exterior walls. The styles were varied and all looked relatively new. The artist who created Bella made other statues around the city.
Fremantle was quiet and there were not a lot of people on the streets or cars on the road. It was nice to walk around in the mornings and afternoons.
The Fremantle Prison is a World Heritage site. The six-hectare site now offers multiple tours about its history and we took two of them. Our first tour guide told us stories of some of the Prison’s most notorious inmates. It was gruesome and intriguing. Our second tour guide took us below the prison to explore the labyrinth of tunnels (for the city’s water supply) built by the prisoners. There were numerous prison escapes but none through the tunnels. There was a rainbow when we emerged from the tunnels.
The Shipwrecks Museum had hundreds of relics from ships wrecked along the Western Australian coastline. Most impressive was the part of the original timber from the Batavia (wrecked in 1629). At that site, divers also found 137 sandstones weighing a total of 37 tons. They were able to piece them together and based on woodcuts found elsewhere believe them to have been bound to the castle of Batavia (modern day Jakarta).
We spent one day on Rottnest Island. It was named by a Dutch explorer who called it Rats Nest Island due to the large quokka population. Quokkas are actually small marsupials about the size of domesticated cats. They look a little like small kangaroos and are popular with tourists because they are friendly and cute. We rented bikes to explore the island and in the summer we heard the snorkeling is world class. The roads had no cars but biking was hilly and at times We stopped at a few of the beaches and had to make an unexpected stop when Ian’s bike chain broke. We called and the bike rental company who brought him a new bike. It would have been fun to spend a few nights on the island.
