Lismore and Freo

(Get to the pictures already!)

Just had a storm in Woy Woy. Nice bit of rain, couple of lightning flashes and a decent bit of thunder. Now it's headed up north up the coast.

Lismore, a few hours north, will be getting a bit twitchy again. On Tuesday they copped tennis-ball sized hail and got declared a natural disaster zone.

"...This ... was the worst I have ever seen in 30 years of living in Lismore. Hundreds of cars are a write-off. Orchard and nursery production have received a massive setback. There are over 300 damaged roofs and thousands of broken windows in an area already suffering from a lack of tradesmen due to the housing and renovation boom. Hardware stores remain open late into the night as volunteers and SES workers hurry to secure dwellings against the possibility of further storms. It could be 12 months or more before the full extent of damage is either known or repaired. [There is] extensive damage to shopping centres, government buildings, schools and hospitals." (SMH)

Hailstorm pictures at Flickr:
Hailstones piled up in someone's garden
Veggie patch slaughtered by hailstones

And have a gander at the lighthouse at Lismore in Scotland in a hailstorm. Not the same Lismore what got hit on Wednesday but very purty.





Cop shop (police station) in Henderson Street Freo. Right opposite the multi-storey carpark and backing onto the footy oval. Must be very handy for dragging dickheads out of the stadium by the collar and chucking them in a cell to cool down.

This isn't the best bit of the station, by the way. The two storey building out the back, which I think holds the old cells, is lovely. Cool verandas and, in front of it, a courtyard overhung by the big tree you can see in the left of this picture.

The style might be Old Colonial Regency (1788 - circa 1840). I don't think it's Old Colonial Georgian (same period). It's definitely not Old Colonial Grecian (same period). Doesn't have the whatsit for that.



Right next to the cop shop. Rumour has it these terraces used to house the prison warders. Seems likely, given their age and simplicity.

I'm going for Old Colonial Regency (1788 - circa 1840) again for these terraces. Could be Old Colonial Georgian (same period) but I'm sure they're not.

Had a look for the bastard, and the cop shop, in the WA heritage listings but they've got a shitty database.




They're right next to an identical row of terraces which is right next to the Freo Markets. Freo's not a big town.


Creepy but interesting

Dragonfly robot spies. Care of the bloody CIA. Who else?

They've been seen buzzing low over protest rallies in the good ol' U. S. of A. Which is creepy because hello! the CIA already have enough spy gear and video of protest rallies and what are they thinking about with these things? Spraying evil stuff directly into protesters' faces or something?

But really cool and interesting also because it's geeky and sci-fi and I want one for Christmas.


Okay. Woy Woy got hail. Just then. Nuffing exciting but. Pea sized and maybe 15 seconds of it.

Iron lace

(Freo)

Nose to the bloody grindstone again today and anyways, the light's crap for local photos. Overcast again but the forecast was for not a drop of rain to fall. Bastards.



Private house once, most likely, and I'm pretty sure it housed a clutch of doctors for a few decades. Some sort of yoga thingy now.

Victorian Filligree (circa 1840 - c. 1890) again. Very nice. Deep shady verandas as well. Just the thing for before the Freo Doctor* comes in.

160 High Street, corner of Ellen Street. Coupla blocks from Bustling Downtown Freo.


* Freo Doctor. Sea breeze that comes ashore in Fremantle early afternoon.




Yer classic Freo red-and-white for the main colours of the building then the Federation (circa 1890 - c.1915) colours on the details.




There you go. Iron lace and a wooden valance. Don't say I don't spoil yer.

Embiggen it and tell me if you reckon those are sunflowers in the lace.




Point Street. Victorian Filligree (circa 1840 - c. 1890) this is. And in point of fact, this very row of terraces is in my Big Book of Australian Architecture as a classic example of the style. "Architect and [exact] date unknown" more's the pity.

And you see that blue car? I swear that's the same car parked in the photo in the book.




Look at that classic Victorian detail. All that missing is a couple of them urn thingies on the top there.



Embiggened version with clear detail

The lacy iron bits on the veranda and balcony are called, not surprisingly, iron lace. Well loved style then and now.

In the right top background you can see a wee snippet of the hideous highrise just a block away on Adelaide Street. I'll take a nice terrace over a highrise any day.


Water torture

Chained to yer desk today? Excellent photos of Ettalong Beach by Nelson at Flickr.

The long drop

(WARNING: This post contains photographs of a mechanism of legal execution.)


Embiggen

This is the gallows within the grounds of Fremantle Prison in Western Australia.

The prisoner was brought in through a door out of frame to the right of this picture, escorted by the chaplain and prison warders. He was made to stand on the closed platform of the gallows. The hangman and his assistant, the doctor and the prison governor came in through the second door, in the back right hand corner of the building. The total of people present in the building was thirteen, twelve and the prisoner.




Most hangings at Fremantle Prison were carried out on a Monday morning at 8AM.

The gallows building contains nothing else. It's a tiny building next to the small block of solitary confinement cells, almost unnoticeable in the maze of buildings within the prison walls.

Before the prisoner was brought in, the hangman and his assistant had to test the trapdoor to make sure it would open when the lever was pulled, make sure the rope wasn't stretchy, work out from the prisoner's weight and height how long to make the rope and a few other things.

There was no drawing the thing out. It was to be got over and done with carefully but fast. "Once everything was in place the event happened very quickly. The time from leaving the condemned cell in Solitary Confinement to the actual hanging was around 60 seconds." (Freo Prison website)

The chair was to support a prisoner too sick or too frightened to stand.

The rails were for the prison warders. They each hung onto a rail with one hand and onto the prisoner with the other, boxing him in to keep him from struggling while the noose was fitted about his neck.

There were no family members or press present, no witnesses other than the official ones and the minister of religion requested by the prisoner.

Around the rope of the noose is a sleeve of leather. It prevented rope burns on the neck of the hanged man. This was a consideration for the family of the prisoner. After the hanging was officially declared the body was handed over to the family outside the gates of the prison.



Embiggen

It is from the gallows the expression "the long drop" comes and this picture shows you just how long a drop it was. Thirteen feet from the platform (open in these pictures) to the floor below. Such a long drop is to help make the hanging quick.

After the drop the hangman and the doctor went down the thirteen steps into the pit and checked that the prisoner was fully dead. The last rites were then carried out by the chaplain or whatever minister of religion had been nominated by the prisoner.

The gallows building in Freo Prison was "only place of legal execution in Western Australia between 1888 and 1984. During that time 43 men and 1 woman were hanged there."

Every prisoner hanged was hanged for murder.


The only woman hanged at Fremantle was Martha Rendell. She was tried in 1908 and hanged on the 6th of October 1909. She was convicted of the murders of her children by "swabbing their throats with hydrochloric acid after they had complained of sore throats because she was jealous of the attention her husband gave them. Rendell protested her innocence to the last." (Freo Prison website)


Eric Edgar Cooke was the last person hanged at Freo Prison. They did him on the 26th of October 1964 and he's buried in an unmarked grave at Fremantle cemetery. Same cemetery where most of my family are buried.

Cooke was a serial killer. My Nana used to tell us horror stories about this guy when we were kids. In Perth in January 1963 there was a series of random shootings in the wee hours of the morning.

It was summer and people didn't lock their doors then apparently. Perth was considered a very safe place to live. On the hottest nights some people even slept out on their verandas. Cooke went round with a rifle and shot random strangers, most of them in their beds asleep. People were terrified and locksmiths were suddenly doing a roaring trade and politicians and police commissioners were hauled over the coals in the newspapers every day.

They caught him in November that year and tried him for a single murder. He confessed to more than eight more murders and five hit-and-runs. (ADB)


After Cooke, sentences for hanging were commuted to life imprisonment and no-one else was hanged in Western Australia. Capital punishment was taken off the WA law books in 1984. (Freo Prison website)


The last person hanged in Australia was Ronald Ryan in 1967. He was hanged in Pentridge in Victoria.

Ryan went straight after a bit of teenage petty theft but in his late twenties he got into debt gambling and started forging cheques. He was convicted but got a good behaviour bond instead of a stretch in the nick. But he kept offending and lead a break-and-enter gang turning over shops and factories. He was picked up again twice in the next few years and his missus divorced him while he was inside the second time.

In 1965 Ryan and another prisoner broke out of Pentridge nick and killed a warder in the process. They were picked up in 1966. It was Ryan who picked up the rifle and fired the shot and it was Ryan who was done for murder. The other guy got manslaughter.

Ryan was hanged at 8AM on the 3rd of February 1967 in Pentridge gaol. "Calm and composed on the scaffold, he addressed his last words to the hangman... 'God bless you. Whatever you do, do it quickly'. He was buried with Catholic rites in an unmarked grave in the grounds of Pentridge gaol." (ADB)

On the inside

(Freo Prison again. Loved that place.)



In the final year of the prison's life (1990) the prisoners were allowed to paint on their cell walls. These paintings area all prisoner art and it will come as no surprise to you that every single painting is of an outdoor scene.










These drawings are from the colonial period. In the post-colonial period the cell was used as a broom closet. The drawings were found when a patch of paint was accidentally knocked off. There's Perspex over the walls now to protect the drawings from the grubby paws of tourists.




The cell once housed a convict who had been trained as a commercial artist. 19th century commercial art training involved drawing certain classics over and over until you got them right.




There in his cell he drew from memory, using whatever he had that would make a mark. How he kept the drawings hidden is an unsolved mystery.


Doldrums

Went off yesterday for a end-of-Dr-Who-season barbie and got a wee bit smashed and sunburnt. Other than that I've been head down arse up since I got back working. Another long day of it tomorrow then there might be a day or two off.


Bungalow alert



For sale. Railway Street Woy Woy. Dunno if it's been been sold yet so be quick. And if you buy it then do evil renovations to it, I know where you live.

Mucking out

The indignity starts here.

Get yer gear off, stand on the H and grasp yer knees while the warder puts the latex glove on.

This is the intake area of Freo Prison, built in the 1940s, used until 1991.

Your particulars were taken down, you were photographed, made to strip, cavity searched, deloused in the showers through that white door on the right, issued a green shirt and trousers and a slop bucket, and banged up.

(The bloke in the Driz-a-bone is the tour guide. And an otter*.)



Interior of One Division or Two Division

Muster was at 7AM. You had 15 minutes to get dressed, grab your razor and your slop bucket and stand by your door.



Left to right: 1850 to 1960s, 1970s, 1970s to 1991.

Yer looking here at the toilets used by convicts and prisoners in Fremantle Prison from its opening 1850 to its closing in 1991.

The one in the middle is a chemical loo, introduced in the 1970s. Wasn't a huge success. The prisoners either smashed them up or drank the chemicals.

After the fiasco of the chemical toilets in the 1970s, it was back to the bucket system. The only upgrade was from metal to plastic.

You and yer slops bucket and water bucket spent 14½ hours of the day and night together in a cell, and God help if you pissed in the wrong one at 3AM.



Division Yard

After muster you marched into the division yard with your razor and slops bucket, emptied the bucket into an open drain and had a wash and a shave.

The yard was where you stayed all day, rain hail and blazing bloody heat. In the yard there was an open drain. You emptied yer slops in there and it was also the daytime dunny. Buckets were cleaned by the new guy.


This is Two Division Yard, dining room and outdoor bathroom. You spent your day in it with around 100 other men plus one warder in that mesh cage in the back right hand corner.

The roof wasn't added until the 1980s or '90s so you got wet in winter and roasted in summer. Behind the camera are the drinking trough, the open drain-cum-toilet, the slops buckets cleaning spot and the wrecked plumbed dunnies of the 1970s.

Other than your morning shave and wash behind the earholes at the trough, you got 3 showers a week, in one of them big open-plan tiled mass shower thingies. Like the one on Oz but with half-wall stalls. Mind you, 3 showers a week was a fucking luxury compared to the convicts, they got a bath once a week. Christ.




In the 1970s portable chemical dunnies (toilets) were put in cells and plumbed dunnies were built in the yards, against the back walls. Trouble was the prisoners either rammed things down them, smashed them up or, and I'm quoting the guidebook here, "drank the chemicals". Hopefully before someone had weed---I think we'll stop that train of thought right there!

So the cell dunnies were confiscated, the yard dunnies were stopped up with concrete and the slop buckets re-instated until the prison closed in 1991.

The plumbed dunnies in the yards had half-doors. This was so the warders could see if there was one bloke in there or two or three. But of course if the bloke in there stood up, another bloke could easily reach over the top of the door and give him a hand. Thus proving that horny blokes with time on their hands are more inventive than blokes who design prisons.


In the women's part of the prison, which housed up to 16 prisoners, things were about the same. Except that some prisoners were pregnant when they came in so you had stinking nappies and screaming sprogs to add to the delights of being banged up. After a bit the babies were taken away and handed over to relatives of the prisoner or made wards of the state.




Warders on duty in the main yard were allowed to pee. Provided they didn't take their eyes off the prisoners. So their loo was in the middle of the yard and had windows all round. On the other hand it had shelter and shade and wasn't a bucket. Sheer luxury.



Ouch

Some poor bastard fell off Woy Woy railway platform on the weekend. "He was struck by a southbound freight train moments later and killed instantly," says Central Coast Live.

18 years old. Jesus. My sympathies to his family.



* Otter. Hairy bloke. Related to bears. Bears are chubby hairy blokes. But not all chubs are bears. Otters are never chubs but always bears.

Freo Asylum

Yep, while I was in Freo I visited my father in the nut-house then I visited another nut-house just for the fun of it.



Fremantle Lunatic Asylum. Started, finished and used in July 1865, finished up as a nut-house when the last of the nutters where transferred to the Claremont Hospital for the Mentally Ill.

Built by the same convicts who built and lived in Freo Prison. Local limestome used again, architecture style Victorian Tudor/Dutch Colonial (circa 1840 - circa 1890). Same as the old Fremantle Boys School below.



Same architectural style, same convicts. Freo Boys is the one on the right.

It's on Adelaide Street in Freo, opposite the Catholic church, right in Freo.

Freo Boys was built in 1854 and finished up as a school in 1958, with the last of the students from there and the girls' school new door (Princess May) sent off to new John Curtin High School up the road. (John Curtin was named after Australia's wartime Prime Minister.)

Freo Boys was also requisitioned during the way, by the navy. Freo was felt to be under threat from the Japanese forces and the students of Freo Boys and Princess May were shipped off to schools in the suburbs.

Back to the Asylum

The first official nutters in Freo were ten convicts. They were shifted from the nick to Scot's Warehouse in November 1857. Can't get any info on Scot's Warehouse but ten bob says it was some old wreck of a building down near the harbour.

The Asylum was only used as a nut-house for 40 years. There was a couple of suspicious deaths in the Freo Asylum in the early 1900s and that seems to have been the catalyst for closing it down. A nice new building with a less forbidding name, the Claremont Hospital for the Mentally Ill, had been built in the suburbs and the nutters were all shifted there from 1905 to 1909.


Inner courtyard, Arts Centre half

1909 to the outbreak of WWII in 1939 the old Asylum was a homeless women's shelter. In the war it was the HQ of the American forces in Australia "during which time the majority of the complex fell into disrepair".


Back of the Arts Centre, used as the logo of the Fremantle Arts Centre Press

After the war it was used for this, that and the other until it restoration started in 1970. Since then it's been housing the Fremantle Museum & Arts Centre. They've got half each, with the old cell and the haunty bits being mainly in the museum's half.

Haunty bits

Someone called Scotty puts it succinctly: the "Old Fremantle Asylum [is] reputably haunted as fuck."

Mainly it's the old cell and an upstairs passageway in the museum part and the big painting studio upstairs in the arts centre part.

You go up this endless fucking staircase to get to the painting studio. Haunted Australia tells us the staircase induces feelings of dread in some people and the ghosts are a former inmate bunged in there by her husband for no good reason and a former warder.



The passageway is the territory of the former inmate. She's supposed to have jumped out of an upstairs window and killed herself after her baby was taken away from her.

When I was a wee thing rumour had it there was a poltergeist who moved stuff about in the storage room next to the studio. On a primary school excursion to the museum we were allowed into the old cell. Predictably, the door shut of its own accord and one poor bugger wet his pants. (I swear it wasn't me!)


Freo Museum
WA Register of Heritage Places
Publicly available records on the Freo Lunatic Asylum

This morning was shit for photos and pretty ordinary for walkies. This afternoon is shaping up nicely. Nice bit of wind and the sky's clear at the moment. It's s'posed to blow a gale. I'll be out in it pretending me balcony is the prow of the Titanic.

The Nick

(Fremantle Prison entrance)

Did a tour of Freo Prison while I was in Freo last week. It closed as a prison in 1991 and opened again in 1992 for tours and stuff.

It was used as a nick for nearly 140 years. Convicts built it in 1850s. It was a limestone hill. They had to quarry the limestone by hand then build their own prison out of it. Talk about yer cruel and unusual punishment.

However, this limestone was pretty soft as rock goes, as Moondyne Joe demonstrated in one of his escapes.


(Only known photo)

Moondyne Joe was a bushranger. He was born in Wales about 1827, transported in 1853 and carked it in 1900. He stole horses and chooks then gained greater fame as an amateur escapologist.

He escaped 4 times from Toodyay nick (pron. Too-jay) then got transferred to Freo and bunged in a cell made specially for him. We looked in it on the tour. Lined with jarrah (very hard Australian wood) and a jarrah door and all of it with iron studs driven in every few inches. Get out of that you scoundrel, said the Governor (words to that effect anyways), and I'll pardon you.

Righto! says Moonie and starts planning escape number 5. Then the Guv goes and helps him by setting him to breaking rocks up in the corner near Fothergill Street with a warder watching him.

Thing is, the rocks he breaks aren't taken away every night. Fresh ones are brought every morning and he's made to stand in the same place every day, on the pile of rocks he's reduced to rubble. This goes on for a bit and the pile of rubble gets higher and higher and eventually all the warder can see of Moonie is his hat. But he can hear him whacking away at the rocks and that's enough to know he's still there.


(Embiggen)

Thing about that is, the rocks he's breaking up are the same rocks the wall is made of. You know where this is going right? Yep, Moonie starts whacking the wall between whacks of the rocks. The wall's a few feet thick but Moonie's got arms like a fucking blacksmith after a few months of whacking rocks and he covers the hole up at night and starts on it again every morning.

So the inevitable happens one day. The whacking stops. After a bit of grumbling the warder clambers up the pile of rubble and there's Moonie's hat perched on the end of the sledgehammer, a hole in the wall and Moonie's buggered off.

He was out for two years that time but eventually got nicked again breaking into a wine cellar. Of course he said to the Guv, you can't hold me you bastard, you said I'd be pardoned if I got out of that bloody cell. Yeah but, says the Guv, you didn't get out of that bloody cell, did yer? You got out through the bloody wall so it doesn't count! Sucks to be you, huh?

No more escapes this time. He sat there like a good boy until they let him out in 1871. Then he went straight, worked as a carpenter and got hitched. But there was no happy ending for Moonie. His missus died in 1893 and he went into the poorhouse (home for the destitute) then off to Freo Asylum just up the road from the nick. He popped off in there in on August the 13th 1900.


Moondyne Joe at the Australian Biographical Dictionary (Straylyan version of Who's Who)

Freo Prison's website

Back

Last month my father moved into a small but well-upholstered room in a Home for the Incurably Bonkers.

In his last few months of freedom he made some peculiar financial decisions. One of these was buying a swamp. It's worth a tenth of what he paid for it. The bloke who sold it to him is not afraid of letters from solicitors (lawyers) and possesses many fine examples. I went over to look the bastard in the eye and inform him of my intention to pursue the matter till hell freezes over.

Hopefully that'll be the end of it. Flying back and forth across the country on tedious legal errands does not thrill me to the core. Let's look at some of the photos I got while I was there.



Xanthorrhoea AKA grass tree.

We had one of these in the backyard when I was a kid. Ours must've been impotent or summat because it never flowered, poor bugger.



There you go. Can't remember if this was two very close together or one with a double trunk.



Base of flower in amongst the leaves.

The flower spikes are anything from a metre to 3 metres long, usually about 2 and as thick as a can of Red Bull. They look soft but are really hard and prickly. Green means they're not in full bloom yet. They go soft and creamy yellow when they're in full bloom.

The spines (leaves) are about a metre long (3 feet), 3-6mm wide (1/8th inch), easy to snap, diamond-shaped in the cross section. A handful makes a great whip but you get yer eye poked out reaching in to break them off.



Fallen trunk of a Xanthorrhoea. Glorious colour inside, no? It's hollow up the middle and made of strange flat spines.

Couple more Xanthorrhoea photos



Kangaroo paw flower. Anigozanthos manglesii its proper name is. Grows to about knee height and in small clumps.



The red and green one is the most sought after. There's a yellow one as well. The texture is soft and velvety.


Blue sky this morning and a bank of grey cloud coming over now. The kookaburras were laughing again. My inbox is full of improbably named persons who want to tell me their volume exploded and a mate sent this amusing photo of two cocks and a ball.

Keeping an eye on things

(Random walkies)



We don't get much good graffitti on the Peninsula so I snap it as soon as I see it. This one appeared to be keeping an eye on the new traffic lights nearby.

We're getting two more sets of traffic lights. One on the corner of Railway Street & George Street, where you come out from Deepwater and another one two blocks away at the corner of Railway Street & Ocean Beach Road, where this graffitto was.

The Dear Old Things are very excited about the George Street lights. That intersection is a menace to DOTs and even to the fleet of foot. The Ocean Beach Road intersection is mostly a menace to front fenders.

Went walkies this morning. No idea where. Started out from home brooding on things and ended up in the bottle shop (liquor store) a couple of hours later with no clear idea where I went in between. It's been a tumultuous couple of months with all this family stuff, plus there's some other crap we won't go into. But I'm enjoying the winter and so life goes on.




Challenger TAFE Centre

Back to Freo again and one of my all-time favourite Freo buildings. Once the Royal Norwegian Consulate, now Challenger TAFE.

The style could be Federation Free Classical (circa 1890 - c. 1915) but I'm putting it down as Victorian Free Classical (circa 1840 - circa 1890). Why? Because of the whaling connection. There was a lot of stuff in the Maritime Museum about the Norwegian whaling connection to Freo.

That wee round room up the top there probably still has some sort of view over the harbour, which would once have been an uniterrupted view right across the harbour to North Freo, proably as far as the Dingo.

Back

The funeral was my grandmother's. She was 93 and went rather quickly and quietly. She would've been rather miffed about the quickly and quietly bit, she loved a good scene. But we filled the church to the roof with bright pink roses and sang Knees Up Mother Brown and howled into our hankies. She would've enjoyed that.

I loved her as much as my Gran but she was a strange bugger. She declared herself not racist but couldn't stand "bloody foreigners". She was also utterly convinced there were None Of Those* in our family but terrified I'd was turning into One Of Them and didn't dare mention it in case she tipped me over the edge. She was also convinced Liberace and Rock Hudson were straight.

Death seems to be stalking my family. It's all been a bit much frankly. Let's look at some photos instead.



In 1929 12 year olds Jim Dix and John Murton built two of these out of a bit of tin (galvanised iron) and launched them off Freo. They were going to paddle round from Howard Street to Fishermans Harbour.

But their boat-building skills weren't up to the job and a couple of hundred metres offshore, John's boat filled up and sank under him. He couldn't swim and when Jim tried to pull him into his boat, John panicked and nearly drowned them both. Jim got them back to shore somehow and they were found by passersby. John had swallowed a fair bit of water and spent a week in hospital and Jim got a certificate of merit from the Royal Humane Society of Australasia.

Maritime Museum at Freo Harbour.



A rather gloomy fish. Don't know why I like it but I do.


Embiggen

Man versus Moby. You'd want to be bloody well paid to go out in a boat that size to poke a whale with a harpoon.

Whalers' Tunnel post


* One Of Those is DOT Speak for a queer person.

Australia II

(Freo visit June 2007)



"Australia II," says Wiki, "bearing sail number KA6, represented the Royal Perth Yacht Club of Australia in its September 1983 challenge for the America's Cup. The defender, the New York Yacht Club, had held the cup since 1851, dominating challengers and sustaining the longest winning streak in sport."

She was stuffed into a corner down the back of the Maritime Museum. Good display (downstairs) with all kinds of info on her and the America's Cup and even on the kind of sails they used way back in 1870.



Thar she blows. The famous winged keel.

Winged keels provide better stability for a boat, by lowering its centre of gravity.



The trim on a sail refers to the amount of cloth of the sail opened up to the wind so a trimmer looks after the amount of trim. Can't find out what a sewerman is (thank fuck) or a grinder but there's three whatsits for raising and lowering sails and three crew down as "grinder" so chances are a grinder's a raiser and lowerer of sails. The bowman probably looks after the spinnaker which is the sail over the bow.

Australia II Crew, Race seven 1983 America's Cup:

John Bertrand - Skipper
Grant Simmer - Navigator
Hugh Treharne - Tactician
Colin Beashel - Mainsheet Trimmer
Skip Lissiman - Port Trimmer
Ken Judge - Starboard Trimmer
Peter Costello - Sewerman/Grinder
Brian Richardson - Grinder
Phil Smidmore - Mastman
John Longley - Grinder
Damian Fewster - Bowman



From the original 1870 (left) America's Cup yacht style to the Australia II in 1983 (middle) to the 2000 NZ entry Black Magic (right).

These drawings are in proportion to each other by the way. Shows how tall the yachts got in 130 years.



Our Prime Minister of the time, Bob Hawke, wore this jacket on TV when Australia won the America's Cup in 1983 and famously said "Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum."

Hawke could drink a yard of beer in one go, which is what you look for in a Prime Minister.

Orientation Day



Map of Bustling Downtown Freo.

1. Maritime Museum, where the Australia II is now.
2. Cicerello's and Success Harbour, formerly Fishermans Harbour.
3. HMAS Ovens, decommisioned submarine, outside the Maritime Museum.
4. Fremantle Town Hall.
5. Round House and Whalers' Tunnel, Arthur Head.


Boat of a different design



Pasha Bulker aground on Nobbys Beach Newcastle in June 2007, taken by Michael from Stockton Beach.

To the right of her you can see the tow cables stretching away to the tugs.



Pasha Bulker aground on Nobbys Beach Newcastle in June 2007, viewed from Stockton Beach. She ran aground during the June storms and was finally floated off (in one of 2007's great anti-climaxes) about a week ago.

Taken and emailed in by Michael. Ta mate.


Dark as buggery here this afternoon. Looks like it's going to piss down again. It's weird having rain in winter again after all the drought winters.