Fremantle is about as far from Fountain Lakes — the fictional, whitebread suburb in Kath and Kim — as it gets. Artsy and eclectic, culturally rich and rimmed by beaches, it’s a modern-day utopia for comedian Peter Rowsthorn, who played Brett Craig in the hit series.
He’s called “Freo” home for the past four years, drawn as strongly to its festivals and colourful community as he is to its sandy stretches. “You can clear your head,” he says. “I just get on the scooter and ride around town, or to the beach. It’s a little bit out of the city, so you feel like you’re in a holiday place without it being flash.” Rowsthorn is in good company.
Ben Elton lives in the sprawling suburb. Tim Winton and John Butler both have homes there. Eskimo Joe’s Kav Temperley, Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker and San Cisco’s Scarlett Stevens are all locals; fashion house Morrison is based in the area’s south. Well-known authors include Craig Silvey, David Whish-Wilson and Joan London.
Like other residents, Rowsthorn occasionally runs into his famous neighbours. “I see John Butler at crowd-awareness gigs, for things like anti-fracking,” he says. “I did Ben Elton’s new film (Three Summers); he might pop into Mojos Bar sometimes. I see Luc Longley and Anna Gare a bit; if you go to something at the Fremantle Arts Centre, you’ll see people.” Fremantle’s fortunes have often risen and fallen in line with Western Australia’s well-documented boom-and-bust cycles.
But while the state’s mining sector remains subdued, Rowsthorn believes the working port town is embarking on an upswing unparalleled since the heydays of the 1980s. “It’s in a transition point. Freo was the hub, ‘the place to be’, but it got stuck after the America’s Cup,” he says. “It’s definitely got its own thing going on now. The council is doing a good job at maintaining the buildings. They know what they’ve got and they’re trying to hang onto it.” Fremantle is regarded as fiercely progressive. Its council has long agitated for a ban on non-degradable plastic bags and became the first to grant a liquor licence to an Australian beach.
The city’s winding streets, ignored by the gung-ho developers of Perth’s past, are characterised by locally quarried stone, crochet “yarn bombs” and gleaming yachts bobbing in the harbours. Its street arts festival championing buskers is the largest in the country.
Architect Nic Brunsdon senses the port’s trademark hippy personality is maturing into a more sophisticated, urbane one. “I think the ‘new Fremantle’ is like the gentrifying part,” he says. “People move to a place because it’s got soul, and the early adopters have created an interesting, liveable place.”
Brunsdon reset inner-Fremantle’s dwindling fortunes when he planted emerging artists, designers and tradespeople into the vacated shell of a 40-year-old department store in 2013. The pop up, MANY 6160, was set up as an antidote to historic Fremantle Market’s dream catchers and tiedye tops. It became Australia’s largest temporary space activation project, signalling that Fremantle wasn’t prepared to curl up and die.
“It’s a time of flux and change,” Brunsdon says. “The new wave of those John Butler’s and Eskimo Joe’s are now emerging, and we’ll know their names in the next five to 10 years.” He lists hip hop group Koi Child and artist Anya Brock as among the new breed. Fremantle’s textured civic fabric has been built through waves of immigration and as the point of entry for 10-pound poms. Records show 3.5 million immigrants passed through Fremantle port between 1897 and 1963. Brunsdon says this meeting of past and future serves as a continual source of inspiration for those in creative fields. “Fremantle is half finished and full of ideas, it’s messy and lively. It’s not a sanitised monoculture,” he says. “Freo has always been the representation of diversity and possibility.”
