Perth, Western Australia: Freeo

Freemantle is inexplicably known locally as Freeo. Surely it would shorten to Freemo? Anyway, Freemantle is the traditional coastal port to Perth’s inland city. It continues to fulfill this role today as a significant global commercial port reaching out to nearby Singapore, Hong Kong and beyond. It also berths the major cruise liners, with Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth docked while we visited.

Things to do in Freeo generally fall into the ‘dockside’ and ‘old town’ areas, which anyway merge into one easily navigated area. Several of the old long dockside sheds have been redeveloped into craft breweries, bars and restaurants. All very civilised.

The dockside Maritime Museum was a highlight for us. It is very well done with trails for the kids and a varied selection of stories told ranging from the establishment of the port, its social and commercial fishing importance, military naval significance, through to Freeo’s position as the spiritual home of Australian competitive yachting and seaborne pioneers. It houses Australia II, the yacht which prised the America’s Cup from US hands for the first time in 1983 due to outstanding seamanship, innovative hull design and the ground breaking application of real-time data to race decision making.

The museum also houses a rare example of the megamouth shark, a deep living shark which was only discovered and documented on 1976.

Further along the docks there is also a shipwreck-focussed outpost of the maritime museum which houses one of the world’s most renowned collections of shipwrecks.

Lunch was taken care of in the old town. ‘Pasta Addiction‘ sits neatly between the train station and the museum and does exactly what it says on the tin. They were doing a decent trade on this quiet midweek noon. It is popular for a reason with its fresh pastas, but we probably could have got away with the smaller portion size particularly for the kids. Oh well, it was left to me to finish it up. The nearby playpark also hit the spot for releasing some of that newfound energy, before we boarded the very frequent train back to central Perth.