63 and free

On our last full day, we caught the train out to Fremantle, aka “Freo”. It’s a charming beach town, with loads (“heaps” even) of history.

When you get off the train, you are immediately hit by quaintness and history.

Like so many other places in Oz, Freo was created largely during the convict era (1788 – 1868). During this time, England shipped some 165,000 convicts to Australia, reasoning that shipping them off kept them from teaching their ways to others, it would ease prison overcrowding in their own horrific prisons, and separating them from friends and family was additional punishment. This was made worse because the knee-jerk reaction of the justice system to almost any minor crime was “Transportation!!”.

Once in Australia, many worked while serving their time in the “hell-on-earth” prisons. Most of the magnificent Heritage buildings in the coastal towns and cities were built by convicts, putting the colony on the map.

Today, 11 of the remnant prisons* have been grouped together under the title of “Australian Convict Sites” and are now a “World Heritage Site” (under the theme of Convictism – Forced Migration).

* See our Feb 24 post entitled “A very Somber place”, and our Mar 4 post “…Hell on Earth…”. Port Arthur is in this group, but not Sarah Island.

Fremantle prison, built between 1851 and 1859 by convicts, was a fully functional prison from 1855 until 1991! Renovated, it is now the best example of a prison from this era.

We went on two tours…

After touring the prison, we had a new task: to find an open restaurant. Throughout New Zealand and Australia, this has a chore on Mondays and everyday between 2:00 and 5:30 (and forget about it on holidays, which there seem to be a lot of! 🤣).

Off in the distance we saw orange umbrellas. As we got closer, they clearly represented the Aperol Spritzer.

AND!

It was open.

It was a good day. 😊