South Fremantle is a suburb of

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

, Western Australia, located within the

City of Fremantle The City of Fremantle is a local government area in the south of Perth, Western Australia. The City covers an area of , and lies about southwest of the Perth central business district. History The City of Fremantle is named after Charles Fr ...

History

The first development in the area may have been when

Richard Goldsmith Meares Richard Goldsmith Meares (1780-1862) was an early landholder and public official at the Swan River Colony in Western Australia. Early life Richard, born April 1780, was the son of William Meares of Killinboy, County Westmeath, and Elizabeth Goldsm ...

established a lime-burning kiln in 1831. Meares had arrived at the

Swan River Colony The Swan River Colony, also known as the Swan River Settlement, or just Swan River, was a British colony established in 1829 on the Swan River, in Western Australia. This initial settlement place on the Swan River was soon named Perth, and it ...

with

Thomas Peel Thomas Peel (1793 – 22 December 1865)Alexandra Hasluck,, ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'', Vol. 2, MUP, 1967, pp 320-322. retrieved 2009-11-04 organised and lead a consortium of the first British settlers to Western Australia. He was ...

in the previous year. As the area was adjacent to the relatively safe harbour of Owen's Anchorage in

Cockburn Sound Cockburn Sound (Nyungar Aboriginal Australian name: Derbal Nara) is an inlet of the Indian Ocean on the coast of Western Australia. It extends from the south of the mouth of the Swan River at Fremantle for about 25 km to Point Peron ne ...

, the area began to be used as an alternative destination point for ship arrivals. In 1898, a railway was built from Fremantle to Robb Jetty. At that time, an abattoir was built for slaughter of livestock arriving from the north-west of the state including the

Kimberley Region The Kimberley is the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy Desert, Great Sandy and Tanami Desert, Tanami deserts ...

. Livestock were unloaded from the ships onto a jetty. Extensive pasturing for the animals as well as small market gardens were established in the region around the abattoir. The Coogee Hotel was built in 1901, and in 1903 the railway was extended to

Woodman Point Woodman Point is a headland on the west coast of Western Australia. It is located in the Perth suburb of Coogee, south-south-west of the city centre and south of Fremantle. It extends westward into the Indian Ocean. The coastal waters immed ...

. Commercial lime kilns were established during this period to provide for the construction boom and population growth which had been brought about by gold discoveries. The Newmarket Hotel on the border of Hamilton Hill and South Fremantle, was often identified as being in either of the suburbs. The area steadily became the centre of much of Perth's heavy industry and comprised the coal-fired power station, railway marshalling yards, abattoir as well as numerous skin drying sheds. From the 1980s however, pressures brought on by demands for residential housing triggered a process of removal of the various facilities.

South Beach

South Beach is an area of beach and adjacent land in South Fremantle. The beach and the disused railway station are parts of the South Fremantle community history.

Industrial heritage

Railway marshalling yards

A large

marshalling yard A classification yard (American and Canadian English (Canadian National Railway use)), marshalling yard (British, Hong Kong, Indian, Australian, and Canadian English (Canadian Pacific Railway use)) or shunting yard (Central Europe) is a railway ya ...

with

signal box In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

tower was built by

Western Australian Government Railways Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) was the operator of railway services in the state of Western Australia between October 1890 and June 2003. Owned by the state government, it was renamed a number of times to reflect extra responsi ...

in the 1960s during the

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

railway line project from

Kalgoorlie Kalgoorlie is a city in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, located east-northeast of Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway. It is sometimes referred to as Kalgoorlie–Boulder, as the surrounding urban area includ ...

to Leighton. The yard was decommissioned in the

Westrail Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) was the operator of railway services in the state of Western Australia between October 1890 and June 2003. Owned by the state government, it was renamed a number of times to reflect extra responsi ...

era in the 1990s.

Robb Jetty Abattoir

:See Robbs Jetty Abattoir Robb Jetty1920s

Public transport

South Fremantle is serviced by bus routes 511, 530, 531, 532, 533, 548, 549, 998, 999 and the Fremantle Central Area Transit (CAT).Transperth web site
/ref>

References

External links

{{City of Fremantle suburbs Suburbs of Perth, Western Australia Suburbs in the City of Fremantle Lime kilns in Australia