Hi all

So, we got to Fremantle and met up with the other two who had left Perth a bit before us. Now this was our first night camping and we didn’t really know what to expect. It turns out that Australia is well and truly geared up for outdoor pursuits and camping is a national pastime. This meant that all the campsites have power points, hot showers, laundry rooms, kitchens and tv rooms. How sweet is that? Firkin sweet, let me tell you. Setting up the tents and everything proved to be a breeze and we watched in awe as our beautifully comfy mattress unfurled itself and started to inflate. The simple things in life. Which turned out to be us as we struggled to get the now fully inflated mattress through the minuscule entrance in our tent laughingly described as a door. From now on that baby was going up inside the tent. We’re nothing if not fast learners.

After dinner (cooked on our gas stoves just to prove we could) me and Mand headed out to get some beer. From a drive through bottle shop. Now this is an idea that would go down a storm in the UK. It’s like a drive through McDonalds...only for alcohol. You pull up, the guy asks you what you want, goes and gets it, puts it in the boot or backseat for you, you pay him, he brings you your change and away you go. Superb. Except we had no idea what beer we wanted and made him list everything they had on special offer, and then did the same for the box of wine we wanted. Just to let you know, we opted for Carlton Cold which is absolutely lovely - a bit like Foster’s Ice only nicer - and a box of cheap white wine which was actually really good too. Obviously, we got lost on the way back to the campsite.

Now you wouldn’t have thought that was possible seeing as we went down a straight road and turned left to get there, but sure enough three quarters of an hour later we were still driving around the same back roads in circles looking for anything that could possibly jog our memories as to where we were supposed to be going. This did not bode well for the rest of our Aus adventure as we’d be travelling tens of thousands of miles with nary a map to guide us. Oops. Eventually though we made it back to the campsite an hour and ten minutes after we left on our fifteen minute run to the shop and back, and we set about getting royally drunk. Unsurprisingly, we managed this with a lot more aplomb.

The next morning saw us waking with the birds. Not through choice you understand but because the birds don’t actually give a f*** if you’ve only been in bed for four hours and have a head like Fred West. But hey, there I was, up at the crack of dawn (which was surprising cos I went to bed with Mandy - sorry, couldn’t resist) and out into a beautiful clear sunny spring day. The mattress by the way was comfier than a lot of the beds we slept in in Asia. I love that bed. See, this was one of the things that I wasn’t particularly looking forward to. The whole festival thing has taught me that three days is about as much as I care to do on an inflatable mattress, without wanting to burn the thing there and then. The fact that is it doesn’t matter how high you inflate it in the evening by the morning you’re sleeping on the floor, or worse still it’s only half deflated and you’re kind of folded into it, struggling to get a breath as it folds over your face and having to be rescued by other members of your party risking life and limb to climb in and pull you out. Ours is great. So much so that we’re seriously considering shipping it home once we’re done with it. To deflate it you just undo the caps and roll it up. That’s it. How simple is that? Well actually, not that simple. The first time we tried it I ended up kicking the s*** out of the thing in a morning temper as I struggled to get the straps back on it. And we rolled it so fat that it wouldn’t fit back into the bag. We’ve sussed it since (well it is only a question of rolling it tighter after all) and are now firmly convinced that it is the invention of the century. Better even than screw top beer lids. And Pop Idol.

Leaving our beautifully set up campsite we headed into town in Dave to go the renowned Fremantle prison. Well it’s renowned in Fremantle anyway. It only closed in the late 80s, but it was one of the first prisons in Australia, built by and for convicts. The tour was given by an ex-warder from London (a proper cockney - cor blimey, apples and pears and I was at Violet’s funeral - and a West Ham fan to boot) who seemed to have a fascination for pedophiles - Our new way of dealing with them is to deport them to England - laugh, not really, but he did give us a vivid insight into what life was like for the prisoners. Hot, overcrowded and going to toilet in a plastic buckets pretty much sums it up. The prison made national headlines shortly before it was closed when the inmates rioted against the conditions. They started a fire and took half a dozen warders hostage in the exercise yard. There was a standoff for about 24 hours and the negotiators pulled a stunt that I’d have been proud of. The prisoners rioted before their evening meal was ready so they were pretty hungry. So the negotiators gave all the other inmates who were on lockdown in the cells surrounding the exercise yard KFC for dinner. The smell of it wafted down to the rioters who were soon willing to trade a hostage for some food. A bin full of baked beans. Nice. One of the warders who had been taken hostage got through it by looking at his watch on the hour every hour and thanking the rioters for getting him another hour of over time. I like that a lot. The standoff was eventually broken and the prison was closed a couple of years later.

They also had a huge exhibition on ‘The Greatest Jailbreak In Australian History’. It was by a bunch of Fenians. Now the Fenians were the precursor to the modern IRA and some of them got deported to Australia. Their leader was in contact with a bunch of local sympathisers who set about freeing him. Security was ridiculously lax (after all, where were they going to run. It’s in the middle of a desert) so the guy pretty much just walked out the gates and was put on a boat to America. Wowee, daring or what. But that was nothing as to what followed. When this guy got to America he became a campaigner to have the other Fenians released. He drummed up enough support and bought a ship to sail to Australia. A couple of the guards who were either sympathisers or had been paid off, I can’t remember which, left the three or four remaining Fenians outside the walls instead of bringing them in after work detail. They were picked up by a couple of locals and rowed to the ship that was docked off the coast and also ended up in America. And that was it. Woo f***in hoo. Can you imagine that? The Greatest Jailbreak In Australian History? How about The Easiest Jailbreak In History Anywhere. None of that digging for miles, or hiding in sewers, or climbing over the wall with hand made ropes and grappling hooks for these boys. What a piece of piss. Then again, maybe I’m doing them a disservice because of what was written at the end of the exhibition. Something along the lines of ‘and this daring escape by these brave men shouldn’t be covered up just because it might embarrass the British Government but should be known throughout the world’. I mean, what the f***? What embarrassment? Does anyone honestly care? I’d be more embarrassed at the thought of my own Government conducting genocide against the indigenous population of the country I lived in. But maybe that’s just me...

Anyway, after a picnic in the park we headed on to the Shipwreck Museum. Which as I’m sure you’ve guessed is about (altogether now) shipwrecks. There was one in particular that fascinated me cos I’d read about it in Bill Bryson’s Down Under book and I wanted to see if there was anything else to flesh out his account of it. There wasn’t. But I’ll give a quick synopsis of it anyway. There was a ship named the Batavia which belonged to a Dutch shipping company. It ran aground and was wrecked. The men on board managed to swim to some nearby islands and it was decided that some of the men (the Captain among them) would take a lifeboat and sail it around the top of Australia to Indonesia to get help. Off they went and then things went a bit wrong. The group on one of the islands got all Lord Of The Flies on itself. They began raping the women and torturing to death any of the men they didn’t like. Who knows why? Maybe they just thought it sounded like fun. When they’d had their fill they turned their attentions to the neighbouring island where the rest of the crew were living peacefully. And decided to invade it. A mini civil war broke out that was stopped only by the arrival (some months after they’d left) of the Captain and the rescue party. Can you imagine the sight that must have greeted them? They quickly quelled the civil war and summarily executed several of the leaders of the first island. Some, for reasons no-one’s actually sure of, they took back for trial. Where they were given the death sentence anyway (I think). For some reason I seem to remember that one of them was the cabin boy. But I just love that story. I don’t know why, I think I might be a little twisted or something. But once again, to return to an old theme, they were just ordinary men put in extraordinary circumstances. Two groups of people who reacted in two completely different ways. It really does fascinate me...

And on that note let’s say goodbye to Fremantle as we head further South to Yalgurup National Park, via Rockingham, Mandurah, Pinjarra and Dwellingup. Sounds like it’s going to be along day to me.

Laters all

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