Interview with Roel Loopers - Freo View

Don’t miss our wonderful podcast interview with Roel Loopers of Freo View fame, that you’ll find at the very end of this post!

Pretty much every day since 2009, Roel Loopers has been getting out Freo View to his many readers. It’s one of the ways Freo folk keep up with what’s happening, or with what has just happened, around Freo. For example, did you know that on Australia/Invasion Day this week there was ‘cage fighting’ in FOMO, in the very centre of Fremantle? Roel did because he was there, not for the cage fighting, but because he was out on the streets, camera bag slung over his shoulder, keeping an eye out for a great pic. And he found one!

Roel wasn’t always a Freo View blogger though. Born in The Netherlands, he first worked in Germany as a press photographer, came to Australia in 1982, found WA a couple years later, and then found Freo soon after that. He has now been settled in Freo for 33 years. In 2013, Roel was recognised as Freo’s Citizen of the Year, and in 2024, the City’s Senior Citizen of the year.

Roel Loopers

Roel successfully plied his well honed trade as a professional photographer in Perth and Freo for many years until retiring 9 years ago. Indeed, he was once the photographer for the Governor of WA, Prof Gordon Reid, and took official photos at Government House of Prince Phillip, and also Andrew and Fergie in the day, as well as Princess Anne. These days, Roel describes himself as ‘a retired professional photographer, now a street photographer, blogger and community activist in Freo’.

Our Editor, Michael Barker, was pleased to catch up with Roel Loopers this week in the historic West End of Freo to make this podcast (that you find at the end of this post) about his life and times and especially on what it was about Fremantle that drew him here and continues to make him call Freo home.

Enjoy our discussion in the podcast below!

*By Michael Barker, Editor, Fremantle Shipping News

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