Perth (primo)

Freemantle, or "Freo", as it's known locally, is by the mouth of the Swan River – the river that runs through Perth. It has the feeling of a very quiet seaside town but, to be fair, I'm here very much in the off season – it's only a couple of weeks to midwinter after all.

My plan had been to spend some time in Fremantle and then take the ferry over to Rottnest Island off the shore a little bit but when I arrived, I discovered that I'd missed the last ferry that makes it worth it for a day trip. So, plan B emerged and I decided to visit the old Fremantle Jail. This was one of the original buildings in the state and was first built by, and to house, convicts transported from Britain. Later, it became a normal prison and functioned in this capacity right up to 1991. Almost immediately after closing, people started visiting it and it became a tourist destination.

A lady from the Midlands of England was the guide for our tour – a tour for only 4 people so we got to ask lots of questions and see a few things that aren't normally available. The limestone to build the prison was quarried from the hill on which it stands – gradually reducing the height as they went. It was built almost as a last-ditch effort to save the colony which was suffering from an acute lack of population and desperately needed new blood and new skills. It seems that the call went back to the UK for convicts with a trade – now, I can't help wondering how that influences the justice system. That said, when you could be transported for 10 years for stealing a loaf of bread, the justice system was probably not that reliable anyway.

The prison design was essentially the same as a Victorian British Prison:

The chapel looks very much like any other Church of England chapel:

But note the wording of the 6th commandment – rather than the usual "Thou shalt not kill". It was felt that in a prison where executions took place, and where the guards were soldiers, the traditional wording might not be appropriate.

The organ (harmonium?) is American:

The original cells were 4' x 7' (1.2m x 2.1m) – literally just big enough to sleep in (on a hammock which was rolled up during the day). When it became a normal jail, each pair of cells was knocked into one, though quite often two prisoners would have to share, so the gain was debatable. There is no heating and no cooling in the prison in a climate where it can get close to freezing on a winter's night and up to 40°C (104°F) in high summer.

The main problem was one of boredom as there was never enough work for the prisoners and most ended up being locked in their cells for up to 14 hours a day. Showers were limited to 3 days a week, with clean clothes twice a week. After several days of temperatures in the 40's outside, and over 50 inside, a riot in 1988 led to some improvements, but the jail couldn't really be modernised (slop buckets were in use up until the end, for example) and was closed.

After a rather sobering visit to the jail, I headed across Fremantle (takes about 10 minutes) to visited the Western Australia Maritime Museum. On the way, I passed this very colonial-looking building and the Round House – the oldest public building in Western Australia and guess what? It used to be a prison too!

The Maritime Museum is a splendid place with lots of interesting exhibits telling the story of the area's association with the sea. They have the Australia II yacht which snatched the Americas Cup in 1983, almost on the finishing line. Its winged keel was one of the best kept secrets in yachting and even brought the sport to the attention of the mainstream news. Even I heard about it and I tend to switch the news off at the first sign of a sports report.

Also at the museum is a decommissioned submarine from the Australian Navy- HMAS Overs.

She was built in 1967 in Greenock (which is in Scotland in the unlikely event that anyone doesn't know that) so she's not much younger than I am and a near compatriot too! Tours are available and our guide was an ex-submariner himself. He had served on 5 of the 6 boats of this class that the Navy has, but guess which was the one he'd never served on?

Quite how 72 men could spend up to 8 weeks submerged in a boat of this size and retain any semblance of sanity is beyond me. There was no vestige of privacy, no time at which you were entirely on your own – even going the toilet involved you removing your overalls in the corridor as there was simply no space in the cubicle itself. You would sleep in a bunk you had to share with others (no, not at the same time!), and which might be in a corridor where people would be walking past all the time. The first picture shows where 12 men would have slept and eaten. The second is the torpedo room, but notice that there are bunks here too! Apparently, it was a good place to sleep because the air-conditioning was more effective here.

After the submarine tour, I had a proper look at the main museum – there was a very interesting exhibition about the immigration to Australia. Official policy was to limit this to British people (or, later, other Europeans) to the exclusion of Asians right up to the 1970's in some form – the so-called White Australian Policy. Once it was abandoned, many more Asians started to arrive giving the country much of the vibrant atmosphere that it has today.

As I was leaving, the receptionist asked if I would be visiting their other gallery – the Shipwrecks Gallery. Now, I wasn't actually planning any such thing, but when she said that they had an exhibition of the early Dutch explorers, my attention was piqued. I just had time to get over to the other building (actually the original museum) and almost run round the two galleries I was interested in, and I'm very glad I did.

In Lelystad, the capital of the Dutch province of Flevoland, there is a replica of a VOC ship called the Batavia. She sank in 1629 while on her way to the Dutch colonies in what is now Indonesia. She sank, because she ran aground on a reef, and that reef was off the Australian coast. Of course, it wasn't called the Australian coast then, but no matter.

In the early days of the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie – the United East India Company – for those who've always wanted to know) their route to the colonies followed the coastline which involved crossing the equator 3 times and took well over a year. Then someone came up with the idea of sailing further south and catching the trade winds to blow the ship across the Indian Ocean before turning north again. This was much quicker and much cooler, but the problem was knowing exactly when to make that northerly turn – navigation involved a fair amount of guesswork in those days. It was not uncommon for VOC ships to more or less run into Australia but, although they mapped it assiduously, nobody seems to have given the place much consideration. If they had, there might be another 17 million Dutch speakers in the world today and the southern hemisphere might be more known for korfbal than cricket or rugby.

This early map shows what was known at the time:

Anyway, one such ship to run aground was the Batavia and, as I said, there's a replica of her in Lelystad. In Fremantle, though, they have the original. Well, what's left of her – she's been half buried in a coral reef for 300 years, so it's remarkable that anything's left at all. Chatting to the curator, I discovered that he knew all about the replica in NL but, he said, they built the replica using a more modern method – frame first and then adding the planking. With the original, they basically put all the planking in place (supported from outside) and then built the frame into her.

As well as the ship herself, there are quite a few artefacts recovered from the wreck site, and they've built an interesting story around the VOC. As I said, it never seemed to occur to anyone that they'd stumbled on the fabled great southern continent – they thought it was probably part of Guinea. Mind you, most of the coast would have been pretty barren and, depending on when they got here, it was probably quite arid – not, perhaps what a trading company was looking for.

Catching the train back to Perth, I managed to snap this picture of the sun setting over the Indian Ocean – it was taken through a train window, so there are some annoying reflections, but I think it's quite good anyway.

In the evening, I went for a walk along the Swan River and got this picture of the Central Business District.