There is no town in Western Australia which has a richer history and heritage than Fremantle. Established in 1829 it was where the first colonists to what was then called Swan River Colony first landed. However, the history of Fremantle cannot be told in isolation so any story about Fremantle is also a story about Western Australia and if storekeeping was the first occupation to be followed in the new colony, then hotel keeping was the next. Within six months of the colony being founded Fremantle had four hotels so this book traces the history of those early Fremantle hotels and how they, and the hotels that followed, shaped the culture and appearance of Fremantle today. To know the history of those hotels is to know the history of Fremantle.

Welcome to this edition of Newsgram!

What do convicts, colonial pubs, and one of history’s wildest jailbreaks have in common? Settle in, grab yourself a pint and join me for a trip down under. 

Before the saloons of the American West, there were the Inns of Fremantle — pouring pints, hiding fugitives, and shaping a young colony one pint at a time.

Alan Graham (Early life) But from the very earliest days, the governor at the time had problems with drinking. So our colony had only been going for six months, and he’s already licensed seven hotels. So we have one of our earliest histories in industries in Western Australia is really its hotels. And because of being a port, they’ve always been a very prominent part of the culture of Fremantle life.

That is Allen Graham, a respected historian, author and past-President of the Fremantle History Society and until recently I was unaware of the similarities between the settlement of the Western United States and the settlement of Western Australia. If we go back to the 1800’s we find that both places were considered the edge of the world — far from civilization and whatever modern comforts there were at the time.  Settlers arrived in both places full of hopes and dreams, only to find unforgiving untamed wilderness, isolation and some tough lessons. 

In the United States, the West was settled by pioneers, miners and risk-takers. In Australia, it was colonists, farmers and convicts. 

While Americans were chasing gold in California, Western Australians were digging for it near Kalgoorlie. And while wagon trains crossed the Rockies, ships rolled into Fremantle’s port, loaded with dreams and desperation. Indigenous peoples were displaced, cultural landscapes were altered, and entire regions had to invent new identities from scratch. But through it all, something amazing happened… communities were born. And at the heart of many of them? The local hotel. 

Allen Graham (Escape of the Fenians) Here is a hotel in Fremantle that’s now called the Orient Hotel. But in the 1870s, that was a hotel called the Emerald Isle. And it was run by a fellow called Maloney. So he’s got Irish connections. But one of the big folklore stories of Western Australia’s history is the escape of the Fenians. Now, I don’t know whether that’s a story that’s come up to your audience before, but we had a lot of transported convicts in the 1850s. A lot of them were people from Ireland, but there was a kind of plot was hatched. Some of these Irish Fenians were actually smuggled out. They escaped from Fremantle jail on an American waiver called the Catalpa. Now, it was an Irish American that was actually placed himself in Fremantle at this hotel, the Emerald Isle, and was able to steal the six Fenians out of Western Australia. So it was a big international event in world history at that time. And those Fenians escaped on this American waiver called the Catalpa and made their way back to Boston. So that’s a real standout hotel and a real standout story in Western Australia’s history.

He’s talking about the escape of the “Fremantle Six” and if you’ve never heard about them it’s worth Googling the term because their situation is legendary. In fact Smithsonian Magazine calls the Catalpa rescue an audacious prison break as elaborate and preposterous as any Ocean’s Eleven script”. 

Now let’s shift from jailbreaks to buildings—because Allen’s book, Inns and Outs of Fremantle 1829-1929 isn’t just a treasure chest of stories, it’s a blueprint of how Fremantle’s character was built, one inn at a time. 

He spent forty years doing research on Fremantle and is compiling a trilogy of books about the area and I should point out Inn’s is spelled INNS because his book is about not only the development of Western Australia but the history of those early hotels and how it shaped Fremantle’s culture. 

Alan Graham (Fremantle Heritage) Well, it’s a port. We’ve got a fantastic climate.

We’re in a Mediterranean climate. We’re not very big, but because we’re not very old, we’ve been able to retain a lot of our heritage buildings. So when you walk through Fremantle, you’re walking through a kind of period of time that kind of goes back to colonial times. We’re not a town of old buildings. A lot of people who say come from the States to visit us, they say it reminds them of New Orleans with a lot of the sort of architecture. So whereas Perth hasn’t been able to retain its heritage buildings, Perth’s our capital, Fremantle’s the second city in the state, but Fremantle’s been able to retain its heritage buildings.

These Inns were places where Western Australia’s early history was written and his book explains the role they played in the development of the area’s history. He also talks about how the decisions made in those buildings shaped everything from politics to culture, and sometimes, even the fate of a nation.

Alan Graham (Early Life) It sort of grew from just one man’s ambition to establish a port really on this side of Australia. He gets permission from the home government, and so we started in 1829. But the British hadn’t really put in the sort of mechanisms and that to run this colony at this time. But because of the way he had sold the colony to the people in England, a lot of people wanted to come out here and start this new township and these two townships, Perth and Fremantle, from scratch. 

When we talk about how communities were built in the American West, we often forget that across the ocean, folks in places like Fremantle were doing the same thing. Same grit. Same isolation. Same fight to survive. The architecture’s different, sure—but the spirit? You’d recognize it, especially when it comes to sports…

Alan Graham  (America’s Cup) And another big event in Fremantle’s history was when Australia won the America’s Cup off the Americans in 1983. The challenge for the America’s Cup, if your audience know about that, was raced off in Fremantle and that revitalized Fremantle through that big international event of the America’s Cup in 1987.

Another event worth looking into deeper if you don’t already know the story. His book is the culmination of 40 years of research and time spent piecing together old papers, tracking down stories long forgotten. This isn’t just about digging into the past, it’s about revealing an entire history of Fremantle and Western Australia that was basically hidden in plain sight.

Alan Graham (History) Your United States has been made up of migrants, settlers, establishing new towns, going through those hardships. If people  may not know their own history of their own town, a book like my Fremantle book will actually help them understand. I think it’s easy to underrate just how hard these very early settlements of these towns were, whether they’re in Australia, or in the States, just how much work and how hard it was for those very first settlers in a lot of these towns. And I think that’s what I certainly try to show. In particular, in Fremantle’s case, if you are running it as a private business, in those 1830s and 1840s, you probably would have thought, we should shut this place down, it’s just too hard. We battled for 70 years before we had a big gold strike in the 1890s, which really boosted some economic, really boosted Fremantle and Western Australia. So that’s part of the themes that I’m trying to show in the book, just how difficult those early years were for Fremantle and Western Australia.

Jut to be clear, this isn’t just a fun book about old Inns. It’s a 40-year deep dive into Western Australia’s unsung past. Allen Graham spent a lifetime connecting the dots, and the result is something to be treasured, especially if you’re a history lover. 

Alan Graham (broad Perspective) But I’ve really enjoyed it. And I’ve just found so much history of Fremantle. And I have to sort of say, it’s not just the history of Fremantle. You can’t just pick a town in isolation and not talk about the wider state of Western Australia. And as much as the ins is the emphasis on the hotels, the outs is on other matters about the town and about other matters in the state of Western Australia, about the sort of political hierarchies, the social hierarchies, the culture of drinking, the place of women, the rise of sort of big groups like the Freemasons and the Godfellows.So there’s a whole breadth of Fremantle and Western Australia in this trilogy of books that’s much more than just, here’s a hotel, here’s a story of a publican, it’s got a much wider canvas than just those facts.

Fremantle’s coming up on its 200th anniversary, and after flipping through this book, I’ve gotta say—it’s got me thinking about booking a trip to Western Australia. 

Alan Graham (200 Years) Yeah, we’re celebrating our 200th anniversary in 2029.

So we’re five years short of that at the moment. So my books are kind of meant to come out to be a little bit of a matching that sort of big anniversary date in 2029.

The West isn’t just an American state of mind. It’s a global spirit—rooted in resilience, reinvention and…a few wild nights along the way. Fremantle may have been carved from hardship, but it was built on character, and its heartbeat still echoes through its heritage inns, its weathered bricks, and the stories poured from every tap.

Allen Graham’s forty-year labor of love is more than a book — it’s a passport to the past. And who knows… maybe your next adventure starts with a cold pint at the Sail & Anchor or the Ball and Chain, one of the oldest pubs in Fremantle. In fact, let’s meet there. Grab a copy of Inns and Outs of Fremantle 1829–1929: A Social History of Fremantle and its Hotels by Allen Graham for your plane ride over — it’s available now at Amazon.com.

Thanks for listening to this edition of Newsgram from Webtalkradio.com