Tuesday 31st October – Exploring Freo and Halloween hi-jinks

I had a lovely night’s sleep with none of my recent middle-of-the-night disturbance and slept in until 9am.  After a couple of cups of tea, I was ready to go and catch the ferry to Rottnest Island as planned.  However, something ground-breaking was happening…. Simon decided it was time to get rid of his beard! It was back to the old ‘goatee-Simon’ for the first time in a year.  I can’t decide if I like having the old Simon back or whether I had got used to the beard?!

We finally arrived down at the quay past midday and found that there were no ferries until 315pm.  It would not be worth spending about £100 to spend only a couple of hours there before the return journey.

Me enjoying my massive veggie Dawg

Time for Plan B – explore the town and, most importantly, get some food.  We opted for ‘Wassup Dawg’ for a gourmet hotdog (which was lush!) before wandering to the seafront. We were confused as to why there were unexpected blocks of yellow painted on the town hall and other buildings we walked past.  All became clear when we reached the steps leading up to the ‘Roundhouse’ (the other name for Freemantle Gaol, the oldest public building in WA, built 1831) and turned around to get the right perspective:

So that's why the town hall looks like this....

A piece of artwork, called the Arcs D’ellipses, by Felice Varini that suddenly made sense. 

From there we continued on to the harbour (right) and there we found a trendy brewery/bar called ‘Little Creatures’, where we paused for a sample.

Always on the look out for a good bird shot!

In some literature that I had picked up I had read that the Freemantle prison tour was worth a look.  Especially as the prison is the only built world heritage site in the whole of West Australia having been built by convicts between 1851 and 1859.  It was the West’s main prison until its closure in 1991. We opted for the ‘doing time’ tour which lasts an hour and fifteen minutes.  Our guide was very informative and showed us all of the tiny cells, exercise yards before the tour culminated with the gorier side of prison life – solitary confinement and the gallows.

The main entrance to Freemantle prison

View of the main cell-block from outside and (below) inside

The cells were tiny and extremely basic in the beginning

Si preparing for 20 lashes

The well-used gallows

We enjoyed exploring, but we had a prior arrangement back at the Allens. Halloween was in full swing and Si had been volunteered to don a gorilla suit to scare the trick or treating youngsters as they left the premises.  The Allens do this holiday in style – all wearing fancy dress, with the house looking amazing and providing enough sweets for the whole neighbourhood! We were then treated to a lovely lasagne before spending time with the kids, playing some darts and blogging before bed.

I'm not convinced that they were very scared.....