Australia Holiday 2007 - City of Fremantle

 Also on the agenda was the City of Fremantle - this is south of Perth and is just about one of the best cities I have ever visited.

The highlight of the holiday for me - the grave of AC/DC front man Bon Scott located in Fremantle Cemetery. You can see here that visitors have left offerings of cigs (including some suspiciously fat ones....), plectrums and beer. Bon was the son of Scottish immigrants (as were his fellow AC/DC band mates Angus and Malcolm Young) and went on to become the perfect heavy metal frontman (quite an achievement when you consider he first met AC/DC when he was driving for them!). Sadly his love of the bottle led to his early death in London in 1980. My visit was one day after the 27th anniversary of his death and as I type this (0745 in the morning on the 26th Feb - back in the UK in jet lag hell) I have managed to miss the Bon Scott tribute concert held in Fremantle on the 25th - this was to help raise funds for a bronze statue of Bon. To see the great man in action please click on the picture above (warning contains graphic images of Angus dressed as an altar boy and Bon as a vicar).

More Bon icons (it still took some time to find the grave even when I had found these - Sue found it). I would like to thank Emma, Sue and Adam for their patience whilst I tried to find the grave (wearing my "it's around here somewhere" face). I had been sent directions from a TNMS subscriber but forgot them. I knew it was in the Anglican corner just off the freeway. It was a real Spinal Tap moment seeing the grave (the Graceland scene).

The railway station (the day we went the trains were not running and had to endure a real white knuckle ride through traffic in a bendy bus driven by a cockney with what I think may have been a loose screw).

Obviously, it would be a sin to not visit Fremantle Prison. Here are the latest inmates just prior to our tour. Interestingly, the aforementioned Bon Scott was a temporary resident here in his formative years.

Fremantle is a real old-school prison. However, when my family first visited Oz in the early 1990's, it had only been shut a couple of years.

The interior and yard. This was built by the Convicts - exiles from the UK not long after they arrived in Australia. These are not to be confused with Prisoners who are people convicted and imprisoned in Australia.

The tall Victorian wings - left pretty much as when they were decommissioned.

Exercise yard - including fantastic mural.

Fine examples of cell murals.

The old execution chamber. The last man to be hanged here was the infamous Eric Cooke in 1964 who had terrorised Perth's Suburbs (check out the book The Shark Net about him). It may surprise you to learn that the death penalty was not abolished until 1984.

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