Welcome to Fremantle Shipping News!

We are an online magazine all about Fremantle.

Each week in the In Port photograph right under our FSN banner, we will feature interesting vessels in port.  It may be a cruise ship, or a huge container ship, or a scientific vessel passing through Fremantle, or something else besides. Where have they come from, where are they going, and just what are they doing here?  We will try to answer these questions.

In the Shipping News department we will present regular articles with a shipping or maritime flavour. In the launch edition we feature an article about what is happening today in one of Fremantle’s old established seafarers clubs, the Flying Angels Club. We also get to know the Mediterranean Shipping Company, the giant of global container shipping that has made a new home in one of Fremantle’s most significant heritage buildings, and take a peek inside their newly restored national headquarters. In future editions we will bring you stories about the role of the Port Authority and the many and varied businesses in Fremantle engaged in shipping and maritime activities. We will also investigate what happens in Fisherman’s Harbour.

We want at FSN to enliven an informed discussion – well, let’s say ‘lively debate’ – about our built environment and city planning aims in our Architecture and Urban Planning department. In our launch issue we feature an audio interview with Dr Brad Pettit, Fremantle’s Mayor, in which he addresses the future planning of the Port, the Fremantle Oval precinct, and the King’s Square development area.

We will also identify buildings and locations that inspire our locals. In our launch edition, architect and long time Fremantle resident Richard Longley identifies spaces and places in Fremantle that have both inspired and disappointed him. In a regular FSN section, What’s Happening Here, we will note (and question) examples of local design and planning that please and upset locals, or fail to do either.

In our Seen in Fremantle department, you will find photographs of the many and varied, the older and younger, who populate the streets of Fremantle during the day and night, and who collectively help to make Fremantle the people magnet it is.

In the Fremantle People department we will go beyond photographing the interesting people of Fremantle, and interview them and then post our audio interviews. There are so many interesting stories to be told. In the launch edition we feature an interview with Professor Len Collard, a senior Noongar man of the Whadjuk people. The Wahdjuk were, and remain the acknowledged traditional owners of the Fremantle area in 1829 when Governor James Stirling and his band of European colonists arrived to establish the Swan River Colony. We speak to Bill Samson, a direct descendant of one of the first settlers of the Swan River Colony, Lionel Samson. Lionel purchased land in Cliff Street in the West End in 1829 and the family business has been there ever since – a remarkable story. And we feature the ‘New Australian’ story of Mrs Nancy Fiocco. Born in Norfolk Street in 1925 of Sicilian immigrants, Mrs Fiocco moved to the next street, Suffolk Street, when she married after the Second World War and has spent her lifetime in and around Fremantle, as have her family.

In our Life, Law and Culture department, we will be telling stories about the other things Fremantle people are achieving. In the launch edition we feature Trish and Nathan’s great story ‘Crest-risen in the Supreme Court’ about how they won the tender for the making of the coat of arms in the new Supreme Court building in Barrack Street, Perth – which they made from silk and other fabrics, as though they were members of a mediaeval tapestry guild.

Maintaining this local handcrafting theme, we also feature the work of Fremantle dollmakers, working as part of the Uthando Project to produce dolls and promote play for children in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

You will find a poem in the launch edition titled ‘Post-apocalyptic’. We welcome your creative writing contributions whether poems, short stories, or or reviews of creative endeavours linked to Fremantle: books, films, exhibitions and concerts or anything else Fremantle people would want to hear about.

Finally, our Secret Fremantle department provides residents and visitors alike with a guide to what are sometimes hidden jewels of parks and beaches, as well as a guide (to grow over time) to Fremantle’s streets and laneways, written by Fremantle residents. Let us know if you would like to contribute to this section.

So, again, welcome!

Let’s have your feedback and especially your ideas through our contact email.

From the crew at FSN.