Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was my pleasure on the Saturday before last to launch a book called Fremantle Tales by author Ian Darroch at the old Woodman Point Quarantine Station in my electorate. As a work of storytelling it has great liveliness and a great sense of the joys and challenges of life as well as its sorrows, and it is imbued throughout with a wry sense of humour. Ian's collage portrait of Fremantle begins with the Whadjuk Nyungar people, and it carefully registers the disastrous impact of colonial expansion on their way of life. As it proceeds, this collection sweeps up everything of significance in its path. It tells the story of Fremantle's physical world, its landscape and buildings and harbour; the America's Cup and other stories of ships, including the Boonah tragedy; and the stories of key figures, high and low, from Gaven, the 14-year-old who was the first European to be executed in the Swan River Colony, to the thrilling escapades of Moondyne Joe, John Boyle O'Reilly, and the Catalpa Six. It details the lives of transformative individuals like CY O'Connor, and celebrates Fremantle's rich multicultural heritage and the history of Freo's iconic football clubs. There is so much in Fremantle Tales, and that is, of course, characteristic of Fremantle—a place of great diversity and energy and change.

I congratulate Ian for producing Fremantle Tales and thank the Friends of Woodman Point for hosting the book's launch.