Berkley Center

Due south of Western Australia’s capital, Perth, is a town called Fremantle. It’s a small town, reachable by a ferry ride through the Black Swan River. Fremantle plays an important role in the history of Australia. Fremantle’s museums chronicle the city’s role as the entrance to Australia from the Western world. While I only expected to learn about Fremantle, I learned the history of Australia and why Fremantle is crucial to its story. From explorers, to convicts, all the way up to immigrants in the mid-twentieth century, Fremantle has been Australia’s Plymouth Rock and Ellis Island.

In ancient times, the Greeks and the Romans put forth the concept that the world was round as opposed to flat. They also believed that this sphere was equally balanced, so the landmasses of the northern hemisphere had to be countered by a “Southland.” In the second century, explorer Claudius Ptolemy drew a world map that guessed that the Southland existed in the south Indian Ocean.

The Southland was an educated guess until the seventeenth century when the Dutch ship, the Duyfken, made landfall in Western Australia in 1605. They believed they made landfall in Papa New Guinea, and due to lack of water and some crew being killed by Aboriginals, they returned to Holland unaware they discovered a new continent. More accurate reports and maps of Australia began reaching Europe after English explorer Captain Cook reached Western Australia, sailed under the continent, and made the first European arrival in Sydney at Botany Bay. Following Cook’s expeditions, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sailed for the forty-third parallel but missed the entire mainland—and discovered the island of Tasmania.

What followed was a race between two superpowers, Britain and France, to colonize “New Holland” as it was called at the time. Captain Cook returned and made a British claim to the eastern coast of Australia (what would later become Sydney), whereas French explorer François de Saint Aloüarn claimed Western Australia for France (which would later become Fremantle, and eventually birth the city of Perth). While France and England were at war in the New World (North America), there was a mutual agreement that they would not attack each other while attempting to colonize this massive continent that had been discovered. This culminated when Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin met in South Australia. Consequently, the French territory of New Holland and the English territory of New South Wales met in the middle of the country with no conflict.

A quick walk around Fremantle lends itself to the more recent vocations of the city. I visited the immigration museum where millions of citizens came to Australia. First, it was just the English convicts. I toured the old Fremantle Prison, which operated from 1855 to 1991 and housed many of these convicts. After British citizens saw the opportunities presented in a new continent, they started coming through Fremantle into the country. Thousands more came during the Great Depression, as agricultural work was plentiful. By the 1940s, immigrants through Fremantle encountered one of two experiences: downtrodden folk looking for work and a new life or European elites setting up estates in New South Wales and Victoria. Around the 1950s and 1960s when trans-Pacific flying was introduced to the world, Fremantle became less crucial to Australian immigration. Whereas travel straight to New South Wales or Victoria on the east coast was difficult due to traversing the Pacific on a boat, the advent of flying changed all of that. The journey into Fremantle and across Australia via rail was a thing of the past. In the close of the twentieth century, Fremantle remade itself as a shipping port and is the second largest in Australia behind Sydney. The city was a major focal point during the recent global negotiations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as a hefty percentage of all goods arriving in Australia come through Fremantle.

The story of Australia will forever be linked with the story of Fremantle. It was the first Australian land settled by explorers. It was the entry point for every person, willing or not, who voyaged to Australia for two hundred years. And now, even though it has lost its original purpose, it is still vital for the survival of the continent as a shipping port.

*Special thanks given to the Fremantle Arts Center, Fremantle Historic Prison, Museum of Western Australia, and the Western Australian Maritime Museum for their exhibits, tour guides, and literature.