So its mine and Fiona's last day together, sniff :'( We were going to go to Rottnest Island today where u can cycle round and see loads of wildlife and go snorkling. However during the nite we had a big storm and this morning it was still pretty miserable and raining so we decided it probably wasnt the best day to be going to Rottnest. Instead we decided to go to Fremantle for somethin to do. First we had to drop off the car back at the rental place, and thank god they never noticed the chip in the windscreen cause i would not have liked havin to pay for that!! The woman even got in the car to move it and i was like sure shes gonna notice it, but she didnt so we were in the clear!

So off we headed to Fremantle on the train. Now when we got to Fremantle and I expected it to be a lovely wee seaside town from what other people had told me, however it all looked a bit dismal and there seemed to b a load of junkies stotering about the place! However i am gonna put part of this down to the fact that it was a pretty grey and miserable day. So me and Fiona decided that we would make the most of our day there and did a wee walking tour thig we had. So started off at the Fremantle Railway Station as this seemed a pretty logical place to start as this was the place we arrived at! We then headed into the centre past the Pioneer Reserve, which is really just a small park with a fancy name and the Taylor Memorial Fountain which was commissioned by a grieving father whose 2 sons had died in seperate incidents, one of whos deaths remains a mystery....

We then headed to Kings Square where we saw a giant chess board and the Town Hall with its ornate clock tower which was opened on 22nd June 1887 to coincide with Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. Now clearly we had walked so far already that we headed over to the Cappuccino Strip with all the coffee shops along it (i wonder how it got its name...) and picked a cafe for a wee drink. And now this is NOT an alcoholic drink i actually decided to hav a cappuccino as i was on Cappuccino Strip, smart eh?! Now while we were sittin in the cafe it unfortunately it started to rain so we gave up on our walkin tour for the time being and headed up to the Fremantle Prison.

We ended up doing 2 tours around the prison. The 1st one we did was just a general tour, it was crazy to think that this place had been used up until fairly recently. We saw quite a few different cells and they also had some set up as to how they would have looked over the years that they were used. Its crazy how small some of the cells were and how many people they used to squeeze into them! One of the most interesting things we saw was some of the atwork done by the prisoners on the walls, some of it was just incredible! In the church they had in the prison they had also gotten a prisoner or convict (cant remember which one!) to paint the 10 comandments on the wall, however there were some slight variations in them to suit the prisoners!

There was a bit of wait til our 2nd tour so we had a wee look around the other stuff in the prison and then had some lunch, not that i managed to eat much, i've totally lost my appetite. So our 2nd tour was about the great escapes rfom the prison. Now the funniest thing is that the only escape that actually worked was an accident. Apparently this guy was puttin cappin on one of the border walls and he fell off out the way! So he was like oh crap and went round to the front door and was banging on it for them to let him back in, however apparently a lot of people do this and so they just told him to go away! Eventually they did realise he was actually an inmate and let him back in lol! Now it was a bit strange cause on this tour there was only me and Fiona and the tour guide, however it did work out really well cause it ment she could show us more and she showed us some places we werent suppose to see! For example she showed us this massive aboriginal painting done on the back wall of an exercise yard which is suppose to be cursed, spooky!! There was also a section of razer wire that still had clothes attached to it from when an inmate tried to escape! There was also this group of guys (the dirty dozen mayb) who were seperated from the rest and went on hunger strike but the guards couldnt figure out how they were not starving having had no food but then discovered the other inmates were passing food thru the bars! So they actually changed the bars on the windows for a metal cover with only small holes in them, they soon stopped their hunger strike!

As a result of doing these 2 tours we'd spent quite a lot of time in the prison but it also ment that the weather had managed to brighten up while we were in there! So we recommenced our walking tour of Fremantle. We passed the place where Fremantle markets r held but unfortunately they r only held between friday and sunday so we missed them :( We then headed down to the Esplanade Reserve which is a massive park and was really nice to walk thru. There is a really interesting momument in this park called the Panter, Harding and Goldwyer Monument and also has the Maitland Brown Plaque on it. Now this is so intersting as it marks both sides of a tragic event, where Aborigines were persecuted yet again by the white people, however the original monument was all about how brilliant the British were and about their dead never mind the Aborigines they slaughtered. So it was for this reason that the plaque was added to commemorate the Aborigines.

We wandered down past the University of Notre Dame, the Maritime Museum Shipwreck Galleries (decided not to go in), the Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour and Bathers' Beach. We also visited the oldest remaining building in Weatern Australia, the Round House, which was the Swan River Colony's first civil gaol.We also walked past the Western Australian Maritime Museum, the E Shed Markets (which again were not open) and the Old Police Station, bringing us back round to the start again.

Now we had also heard about this digeredoo shop in Fremantle where u can try the digeredoos so we went in and had a wee look and a try of the digeredoos. Some of them looked really amazing, was so tempted to get 1, but its a bit big for travelling with and i should probably save the money!