Tag Archives: Market

A Day in Fremantle

Sunday 4 August 2024 – Stephen, the driver who ferried us from airport to hotel, had waxed lyrical about many things, among which was Fremantle when the market is on, meaning Friday, Saturday or Sunday. He had suggested taking a ferry down the river for the views over the various suburbs, and then catching the train back, which thus became our plan A.

Plan B, involving travelling both ways by train, was drafted and adopted very soon after discovering that the ferry was fully booked. The train station, a handsome building,

is very close to the hotel, and so we could very quickly be discovered staring at the screen of a ticket machine, trying to work out which of the various fare options we should take, given that “return ticket to Fremantle” didn’t seem to figure among the candidates. We each opted for a Day Rider ticket, costing about Aus$10. The machine disgorged a small slip of paper, which seemed to be very different from what everyone else was using – they were beeping in and out through barriers, using cards or phones. However, it was quite possible to simply wander past the barriers, so we just walked through and fervently hoped that was a legit tactic. It didn’t seem to be policed in any obvious way at all. The Fremantle train came, bang on time, and left, bang on time, to start the 17-stop journey through the suburbs to Fremantle – “Freo”, as the natives call it. We noticed, as we went along, that they don’t give you much time at any stop to get through the doors before they are closed; at least one couple very nearly got separated by the alacrity of the process.

We also noticed that Transperth have their own version of the UK’s much beloved “See it, Say it, Sorted” campaign.

Mercifully, it’s just posters in the train rather than the inane broadcast slogan we have to endure in the UK.

After 45 minutes we arrived at Fremantle and started following the crowds from the train towards the centre of town. Driver Stephen had mentioned that Fremantle was much less high rise than Perth, with many of the older buildings still extant. And this makes it a very attractive centre to walk around.

We decided to reward our fortitude for taking on the public transport system in a far-distant land by having a coffee. There was a bewildering choice of establishments, so we chose one at random and were able to sit out on the pavement and watch the world go by, the while admiring the planters that demarcated the road’s central reservation.

It seemed that going by in some kind of ostentatious, classic and typically American car was A Thing;

the red one came by at least twice whilst we were taking coffee. Maybe he was showing off, or maybe he couldn’t find a parking spot large enough for his Chevvy; but his licence plate, CRUZN 57, tips the odds in favour of the former, I think.

We were in Market Street, which we guessed might lead us to the fabled Fremantle market; and so it proved as we walked a few more steps along the road.

(The extra crowds outside the market hall had been attracted by a street performer, who was in the middle of a very polished and amusing act involving bullwhips and other tricks.)

It might have been crowded outside but that had nothing on the press inside.

All sorts of enterprises were in action, offering all kinds of things. There were, of course, many stalls selling foodstuffs

but there were all sorts of other emporia as well.

I was quite taken with this chap, who was examining with great intensity the selection of pins at a stall specialising in pins and fridge magnets.

He looked very much like a connoisseur of such things, seeking Just The Right Thing to add to his clearly very well-established collection. Either that or someone that the stallholder needed to keep a sharp eye on.

The other Fremantle attraction that driver Stephen had waxed lyrical about was

The Prison, which is Western Australia’s only World Heritage Listed building. So we headed that way, past a striking installation on the wall leading to it.

Entry is free, and takes one into a courtyard off which there are entrances to a variety of exhibition rooms,

but the best value of a visit comes from a (paid) guided tour. There are various different tours on offer; the one that interested us was the chance to see inside the place, the “Behind Bars” tour. We had about 45 minutes to wait, so looked around the various free exhibits, which had a lot of information about the history and significance of the place, as well as displays of various aspects, such as prison clothing.

Normal prison garb

“Punishment” garb

We had a coffee at the “No Escape Café” whilst we waited, and took the chance to experience a slice of typical Australian gastronomic culture.

Our tour was led by a very knowledgeable and friendly lady called Debbie, who gave us a brief overview of the history of the place, before taking us into the inner part of the prison.

The prison was built by convicts, who had been transported from the UK, between 1852 and 1859, using limestone quarried from the site. Western Australia at the time was in a bad way – a small colony which had few resources, skilled or unskilled, to expand the economy. Between 1845 and 1847, York Agricultural Society, supported by several merchants, lobbied the colony’s Legislative Council to petition the British Government to send convicts. They saw this as the best option to help supplement the lack of skilled and unskilled labour. The petition was successful and the first convicts arrived in 1850, with building the prison itself being their first task. At first called The Establishment, it was renamed Fremantle Prison in 1867. Transportation ceased the following year when the Hougoumont carried the last convicts to Fremantle. Nearly 10,000 convicts passed through the ‘establishment’ between 1850 and 1868, and the prison remained in use until 1991.

Debbie, of course, gave our group vast amounts of information about the prison as she led us around, and I, of course, have forgotten most of it. She described the induction process, which was a pretty undignified matter for incomers, then led us through the kitchens (much expanded from their original size)

to the exercise yard

which must have been a hellish place – as many as 700 male convicts left to their own devices from 8.30am to 4.15pm, overseen only by a guard (in a separated cage for his own protection), and with nothing to do to occupy their time. What could possibly go wrong?

Amazingly, in the mid-20th century, some turned to art, and there are the remnants of so-called Carrolup Art on the walls.

Time, and the nature of the limestone wall beneath, has faded the paintings, but there is an illustration of what it would have looked like in its time.

There were further examples in some of the cells.

Ah yes, the cells. Debbie then led us to the actual cell blocks for the men’s part of the prison.

We got a chance to see what the original cells looked like, and how they developed over the years that the prison was in operation. The original cells were torturously tiny, and were gradually expanded over time.

Typical cell, 1852 – 1860

1860 – 1870

1920 – 1960

1960 – 1980

Some of the cells were extravagantly and exquisitely decorated with art.

Some were more simply decorated

1980 – 1991

There were two other areas that Debbie showed us as part of this hugely interesting tour: the gibbet room, which was in use until as late as 1964,

and the women’s prison (now a youth hostel!)

Although women were incarcerated for anything from the slightest to the most serious of offences – drinking, through stealing to prostitution – it could be supposed that their prison life was less arduous than the men’s. There were some 70 women prisoners, as opposed to the 700 men, and their time was at least occupied, with washing and mending (and even eventually cooking), which must have been preferable to day after day of boredom and lack of privacy for those men not on labour gangs or working in the kitchens.

After this engaging couple of hours, we wandered on a little way from the prison, past the Fremantle Oval

where, of course, the game is Australian Rules Football, not cricket. Outside the Oval is a statue

dedicated to

(Look it up; I can’t be doing with explaining it here.)

We pottered on for a bit, past some artworks of different vintages

and I got my first wildlife photo of this trip, a Western Corella (a sort of cockatoo),

which was among a whole bunch of them cackling and squawking in the trees.

Our wandering had taken us back to Fremantle train station, and so we used the train to get to North Fremantle for a cocktail followed by an early dinner at Bib & Tucker, which was very pleasant and an opportunity to watch the sun go down. Then we caught the train back to Perth, so the Day Rider tickets came in very handy, thank you very much; a good decision, accidentally made.

The morrow has us participating in the only actually scheduled activity during our time in the Perth area, a visit to Rottnest Island, where the main objective must be to get a photo of its characteristic wildlife. How that went, and whether I was successful in catching a good photo of it, will have to wait for the next, thrilling, installment.

Analamazaotra and Andasibe Nature Reserves

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Saturday 8 June 2024 – We had a really content-rich day today, as you’ll see from the length of this post (I suggest you get yourself a cuppa or a glass of something cold and settle down to it if you want to get through it in one sitting). As usual, it started with an 0530 alarm call and an 0730 departure. We had only two destinations, but did four walks during the day. In the case of three of them, I was struck by the similarity of wildlife walks and Wagner operas. It was Rossini who said, “Wagner has some wonderful moments, but some dreadful quarter hours”. Similarly, walking around in Madagascar contains some wonderful moments, but also hours of tedious crashing through undergrowth, overgrowth, mud and tree roots. Sometimes in the rain. I got quite tired and grumpy at one stage, since we’d only managed about 10 hours’ sleep over two nights; but nonetheless we came out with some good photos and some lovely experiences.

I haven’t talked much about the weather we’ve experienced so far, apart from ~~moaning about~~ mentioning the rain. Actually, we’ve been quite lucky in that it hasn’t often rained on us so as to ruin our enjoyment. The temperatures have been on the cool side – about 12°C in the mornings, a few degrees warmer during the days. Today ended up in wonderful sunshine and temperatures in the low twenties Celsius, but as we left our hotel room, the start of the day was misty and cool.

Walk No. 1 was in a local National Park, the Analamazaotra Reserve. Kenny told us that this was secondary rainforest (i.e. there’s been a degree of replanting over the years), that it was smaller than the primary forest we’d visited in Mantadia and more visited; also it was Saturday, so it was likely to be quite popular. This view was supported by the activity in the hotel car park.

There were several tourist minivans awaiting groups from the hotel, and we knew that one such group was a bunch of Americans; we wondered if they were headed for the same place as us (see later).

Like most of the reserves we’ve visited, Analamazaotra offers toilets at the entrance. There’s little doubt which is the way to the gents, that’s for sure.

We met Abraham, as before, and set off into the reserve.

The double line of blocks is something we’ve come across several times. It’s not necessarily unbroken, but is a common way of laying the trails. Abraham, of course, led us off the trails a few times, so there was quite a lot of crashing through undergrowth. It wasn’t raining, but it obviously had been, as we were mercilessly dripped on by the forest trees.

It was half an hour before we came across anything noteworthy, and that was a quite substantial termites nest.

Someone had poked a hole in the top, and the termites were busy mending it.

At around the same place there was a wonderfully-shaped spider’s web,

but it was a further 30 minutes before we came across any major wildlife. However, it was a splendid encounter, with a family group of Diademed Sifakas, At first, they were a bit elusive;

but eventually we got good visibility of them, feeding in a really athletic fashion.

They were lovely to watch, so I took lots of pictures. Obviously.

The popularity of the reserve was demonstrated by the number of other people who had congregated to watch and photograph the action.

I have no right to be snarky about this, but I quite resented all these other people trying to get in on my action. At one stage, the entire group of about a dozen Americans from our hotel tramped past us in their search for things to see. The place was really quite crowded.

A few minutes after we left the Sifakas, we heard Indris shouting at each other, much closer than we had the day before, so I recorded a bit more of the sound, as it’s really (a) distinctive and (b) loud – apparently the Indri call is among the loudest animal calls known.

We did get to see the Indris, but they were very high up and I didn’t get any striking images or video, just a few snaps.

We pressed on again, and eventually Abraham led us off another path, which took us by a fish farm, something one doesn’t normally expect to find in a forest.

It’s partly a research facility, partly commercial, but the farming seems to be done in a responsible way, starting fish in the smaller enclosures you see above, and moving them between enclosures as they grow, then into successively larger enclosures before extraction.

A few metres on from this view of the fish farm, we got the second charming encounter of the day; two Eastern Grey Bamboo lemurs, stuffing their cute little faces with loquats.

The path then led to the Green Lake.

Yup. It’s green. Not a lot to add to that, though, I have to say. And it was the last thing we saw on the walk, which was five kilometres spread over four hours, hence (looking at how many encounters we had) my comment about the similarity with Wagner’s music.

On the way back for lunch at the hotel, we stopped at Andasibe village and walked through it. It’s very picturesque and colourful any day of the week, but this was market day!

Obviously, I took a load of photos of this very vibrant, colourful and noisy place. I have put them up on Flickr, if you’d like to take a look. Walking through the village also gave us an insight into what people of colour must feel in the UK; everyone was smiling, friendly and welcoming – but we were the only white faces in the village. I felt like an intruder, even though I wasn’t being looked at that way.

It was now lunchtime, the sun had come out and it was a glorious day.

During the afternoon, we returned to the VOIMMA (community-run) reserve at Andasibe, as Jane wanted to see some chameleons during the day time when we’d see their best colours. Thus started another Wagnerian walk.

After about half an hour, we saw a Parson’s Chameleon, which is the largest of the Madagascan chameleons.

Chameleons move very slowly.

We saw very little for the next 40 minutes or so. But then what happened was rather lovely – a group of common brown lemurs came to play with us.

I had never expected to get this close to lemurs, but these were clearly habituated to humans. They didn’t even appear to mind when the arsehole of a Frenchman who was also at the scene started using them for selfies and had to be warned off actually touching them. The vacuousness of some people utterly bewilders me.

We saw no wildlife of any pith or moment for the rest of the walk, but our path took by the river, across which was a Sacred Place.

This is reserved for spiritual occasions. The colours, red and white, represented the colours of the king’s first and second wives in those times when the island had a monarch (deposed by the French in 1897). It seems to be used to mark special occasions, sometimes accompanied by an animal sacrifice.

After an all-too-brief rest back at the hotel, we embarked on the final walk of the day, a night walk around the Analamzaotra reserve. This was clearly also a popular option for a Saturday night. We started off along a road and there were dozens of people in front of us all heading along the same route. The path led by a lake, and it was faintly amusing to see our American gang from the hotel walking along the opposite side,

We didn’t see much, to be honest. A poor unfortunate Goodman’s mouse lemur got spotted

and caused another of those feeding frenzies which I find so uncomfortable.

Apart from that, all we saw was a small (but pretty) frog

and a couple of big-nosed chameleons.

A note, here. Their noses might be big, but they themselves are tiny.

Thus ended a day which seemed to be largely filled with tramping round dripping rainforest, but which had actually had some really lovely moments.

Sorry to have droned on for so long about the day, and well done for reaching this point. We leave Andasibe tomorrow and take the five-hour drive back to Tana, albeit via a final wildlife walk, so I doubt there’ll be that much to write about. You’ll have to keep reading these pages to find out, won’t you?

Quito marvellous day out

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8th April 2018

After the relentless tourism of the Galapagos, we flew to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, and, weatherwise, a very different proposition from the scorching heat of the islands, being a refreshing 19°C or thereabouts. Our guide, Paul, delivered us to a lovely hotel in the old town of Quito, the Casa Gangotena.

(it’s the white building on the right). It’s a very splendid place, old school posh, with remarkable decor, great service, and very good food in the restaurant. It was once the family home to a pair of sisters who had one bathroom and 15 servants each. For the last 6 years, it’s been a hotel and one I’d thoroughly recommend.

Paul took us around the old town of Quito the next morning. The first thing he did was to lead us up some streets to a local market. The streets are fascinating; colourful, ramshackle and quite scruffy, and some areas are really quite dangerous, although Paul assured us that things are much better than they have been.

Shops are normally openings in the side of larger buildings, selling a bewildering variety of things, many quite unfamiliar to European eyes

Although there are plenty of people just selling things on the street.

The market, called the San Francisco market (named after the saint, not the Californian city, and styling itself “Quito’s 1st Market”) is interesting to wander around, although I have to say I was glad Paul was there (a) to explain to the stallholders about the weird tourists he had with him, and (b) to tell the tourists he had with him about some of the weird produce which was on offer – a staggering variety of fruits, vegetables and meat, mainly organised in sections.

For example, this stall had more varieties of potato on it than you could shake a stick at.

There was even a food court there.

And in the meat section, Jane was particularly taken with the cows’ feet on sale.

Paul then took us back to the square outside our hotel which features a huge Franciscan monastery and church, and is a stone’s throw from six other churches. We visited the Jesuit church as well as peeking in the Franciscan church, and they are both absolutely stunning inside. Neither permit photography inside, which is understandable but annoying to me as a keen photographer. So here are photos of postcards we bought, to give you an idea.

The interiors are extraorinarily ornate and sumptuously decorated. In the photo below, one of the two staircases up to the organ loft is actually trompe l’oeuil, just to maintain symmetry!

After that, we went on to the roof of the city library, which was once the Jesuit college and which had a relief model of the city, showing its extraordinary geography, situated above major fissures in the ground.

The library roof gave us a couple of nice views. Just as well, really; Quito is at quite some altitude (2800 metres, or one-and-three-quarter-miles, high) and lugging my camera backpack up two flights of stairs left me feeling pretty breathless, so I’m glad the view was worth the climb.

And it became apparent that something was brewing in the main square outside the presidential palace. Crowds had gathered for a weekly event, the changing of the guard, which is overseen by the Ecuadorian president. This being so, people use it as an opportunity to stage protest rallies – there were several groups shouting out about their particular grievances before the guard change took place. It was a colourful, noisy scene

with marching bands of the guards taking the weekly pledge to guard the president, Lenin Moreno (the chap in the wheelchair) who was watching the proceedings from a balcony in his palace.

I captured a lot of video of the proceedings, but you’ll have to wait until I can produce some kind of edited footage. It was good to have seen this piece of weekly theatre, anyway.

After this excitement, it was time to depart for the actual equator, which, for those who didn’t pay attention in geography lessons in school, is what gave Ecuador its name. There’s an attraction called the Intiñan Solar Museum, some 40 minutes drive north of the city. It’s a bit cheesy, but guided tours ensure you get a few nuggets of science and history out of a visit.

Today’s Ecuador was shaped mainly by invading Spanish forces, who arrived in the 16th Century, only a few decades after the Incas. The indigenous peoples (who predated the Incas by many thousands of years) were of several tribes, but had worked out that this region was on the Equator. They called it “the middle of the world” which sounds presumptuous, since the equator passes through land in other places, of course. However, pride of place is claimed on the basis that Ecuador’s equatorial altitude is higher than any of the others – the assertion is made that one is thus typically two pounds lighter standing on the equator line here than at sea level.

There is, of course, a line marked in the ground to show where the equator runs. Yes, you can have your photo taken on it. No, I’m not going to share it. You can have this one instead.

The tour offers some demonstrations and challenges for visitors’ amusement:

Coriolis force is demonstrated by emptying a bath through a central plughole into a bucket. On the equator, the water goes straight out of the plughole without rotation, whereas either side of the line it rotates as it leaves the bath. (This demo was somewhat fixed in my view, but, hey, it’s a bit of fun.)
Visitors are challenged to walk the equator line (heel-and-toe) with eyes closed. Since I can hardly even stand on one leg with eyes open, there was no point in my trying this.
Another challenge is to balance an egg on the head of a nail. Jane was successful, not just once but twice

and got a certificate for it, too.

As well as all of the flummery around the equatorness of the place, some serious nuggets can be gleaned about the indigenous pre-Inca inhabitants. Apart from anything else, the Shuar people (part of the Jivaro tribe) were headshrinkers, and the process of headshrinking is described: decapitate the subject; remove and discard the skull; seal the lips, eyes and nose; simmer the head in a boiling pot for a couple of hours; dry and smoke the head; and finally brandish the head on a spear (to scare others if subject had been an enemy), or wear it as a necklace (if subject had been a respected person). Whatever, the result looks like this.

On the way back from this museum, we even caught sight of Quito’s best-known volcano, Cotopaxi.

Paul had one more delight for us; a visit to a hill call El Panecillo, which features on it a giant statue of the Virgin Mary, the only one sporting wings (based on text describing the Woman of the Apocalypse in the book of Revelation in the Bible). You can see the statue in the background of the first picture in this post. From the top of the hill where the statue stands, you have a 360° view across Quito, and you see what a sprawling place it is.

Quito is a remarkable place, one I’m glad to have seen, although not necessarily one I’d be keen to walk around by myself, particularly at night. The hotel was lovely, and our guide Paul did a great job in making sure that we’d been able to see and understand some important aspects of its life, history and culture.

Steve Walker

Photography/Videography Hobbyist; Travel Enthusiast

Tag Archives: Market

A Day in Fremantle

Analamazaotra and Andasibe Nature Reserves

Quito marvellous day out