Fun in Freo

Cell Blocks at Fremantle Prison

Fun in Freo was our motto after our hard work busking, so we headed off to the World Heritage listed Fremantle Prison on Monday morning. (After I had done 3 loads of washing, including all our costumes!) The prison was built by convict labour in the 1850s to house WA's influx of convicts and Ticket of Leave men as they arrived in the colony to be put to work building the city's infrastructure. The first inhabitants were incarcerated in the building in 1855 and the last in 1991!

And which of you would like to demonstrate
the use of the toilet bucket?

Our guide had fun with the kids, treating them like convicts: getting them to line up, enter cells and walk in silence from number to number in the exercise yard. He played a trick on them there, asking them to walk to number 6. As 6 and 16 both have superstitious connotations with the hangman's noose, neither numbers were used. Jackson strolled over to stand between 5 and 7 and Marcus used his fingers to convert 9 into 6. In one of the exercise yards, one crim had helpfully painted instructions on how to remove ATMs from a wall. Once the prison opened to the public there was a rash of ATM robberies, so they had to paint over his artwork! Damn! With busking and ATMs, we could have continued travelling indefinitely!

And on the Menu tonight ... kids in the kitchen

The tour was captivating and we unanimously decided to come back on another day to do The Great Escapes tour. We also unanimously decided that we were hungry and exhausted, so we had a late picnic lunch at The Esplanade, a wonderful old park on the waterfront. Ella and Lachlan had a great time playing on the spiderweb while the rest of us investigated our inner eyelids under a shady tree. It was not hard to convince the kids to go to bed early that night.

You could see Rottnest Island from
up there!

Since CHOGM was over, Tuesday was Perth sightseeing day. Our first task was to drive to Osborne Park to buy the front part for the tent, which we need now we are striking some weather. It was not far to King's Park where there is a wonderful panoramic view from the top of the aptly named DNA Tower. The kids were very keen to spend some time in the Synergy Playground there, which is full of dinosaur models and information about the earth's prehistory.

Despite his appearance, this guy is not related to
that croc we found in Normanton!

GOLD! - The Perth Mint

The Perth Mint was next on the agenda. While we were waiting for our guided tour, we played "The Most Expensive Item" game in the showroom. I won, finding a tiny Pink Argyle Diamond worth $285 000. Jackson was quizzing the security guard and found that a coin worth $5 million was given to the Queen during CHOGM. We discovered that the 26 largest gold nuggets ever found have all been found in Australia. We also discovered that a gold bar couldn't be lifted with one hand by any of us except Dave and that as a family, we would be worth $9 250 000 if our combined weight was a lump of gold! The tour included the pouring of a gold bar which was amazing to watch. They have melted and poured the same gold bar close to 33 000 times in the 17 years of tours in the Mint.

Jackson's photo of the Bell Tower

We finished our sightseeing at The Bell Tower along the river in the city. The tower is a result of an architectural competition and the building was a gift to WA during the Bicentennial year.

A quick stop in Fremantle to replace our aged rainjackets gave the kids much excitement - now we can have 6 Ninjas in photos! Be warned. After all that, we were pleased to return to camp.

The Main Entrance to the Prison

We returned to Fremantle Prison for the Great Escapes Tour on Wednesday morning. Brendan Abbott, The Postcard Bandit, escaped from here before continuing his bank robberies across several states. The funniest escape story was an unintended escape from an inmate who was due to be paroled the next day. The authorities were trying to find work to keep him occupied and put some scaffolding up against the prison wall and gave him a bucket of cement to repair the top of the wall. He overbalanced and fell 5 metres onto Hampton Road, jumped up and ran around to knock on the front gate. The guard slammed the door in his face, saying "Mate, this is a prison". His frantic knocking was eventually rewarded with access back into the prison, as the guard eventually noticed that he was wearing the prison greens!

Razor wire

In one escape, the prisoners made a phone, rang the guard in
the tower and told him there was trouble left while they
escaped right!

East Fremantle was our lunch spot and we walked along the Swan River, where we saw 2 dolphins. Drove back to camp to get our togs then had a drive south. We stopped at Coogee Beach for a swim and had a very relaxing evening on the beach, despite the threatening storm. Ella sculpted our family in sand, including the cats! The storm hit just as we left the beach, but the fly and the new front panel kept our tent nice and dry.

Bonnie, Clyde, boys, Ella, Mum looking glam and Dad

Coogee Beach before the storm

We are staying on for another couple of days in Freo. We hope to do another busk at the markets and the kids are very excited to be booked on the scary torchlight tour of the Prison on Friday night!

Stay tuned ...