Fremantle

Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Today was let’s be tourists day and we had a ball! All due to the tour guides we had.
The Western Australia Maritime Museum has the HMAS (Her Majesty’s Australian Ship) Ovens which is, our guide Dave told us, an “artifact”—meaning it must be complete and original. It has all the original gauges and engines and you-name-its, right down to the paint they had to order from Scotland from the original paint supplier. She is named after an Australian Explorer John Ovens and has the motto "Silence is Golden." During WWII Fremantle was one of the largest if not the largest sub base for the US Pacific fleet; 126 American subs were based in Fremantle, 11 of which were lost at sea. None of the British or Dutch subs were lost, but they had much smaller fleets.
We (we is just Randy & me and our guide; we were lucky to get a private tour) got to climb down into the sub (no mean feat for a pair of over 67 year olds, let me tell you! And Dave is no youngster, either.) through the hatch that they used to load the torpedoes. Neither was he a submariner (pronounced sub-MAR-i-ner in Australia, not sub-ma-REEN-er) but he knows as much as any submariner does, I’m sure. He’s been leading tours on the Ovens since the Museum got the boat in 1998. WE llearned how they used the periscopes and how they recharged the batteries; we learned that submarines of that era (before nuclear subs) did not have to surface to recharge the batteries they used snorkels invented by the Dutch and they used them not at night but at dawn and sunset to hide the trails they might leave and to hide the sounds they might make (fish come to the surface at dawn and sunset to feed and that noise covered the sound of the periscopes travelling through the water). We learned that under the whole of the accommodation area of the sub are the two massive batteries that have 224 cells in each, producing 2.2 volts or a total of 448 cells. At over half a ton for each cell, the batteries weigh in at nearly 200 tons and contain the power of 94,000 car batteries!
The WA Maritime Museum is a beautiful building very reminiscent of the Opera House in Sydney. I don’t know exactly how tall it is, but the height of the building was determined by the distance from the bottom of the keel to the top of the mast of Australia II (displayed proudly at the Museum), the 12-metre boat that beat Dennis Connor and wrested the America’s Cup from the US for the first time in 132 years, still the longest winning streak in any competive sport. Fremantle is justly proud of winning the America’s Cup from the US but many people who knew we went to the Museum worried that we would not like the fact that they were so proud of their win. It is typical of the Australians we have met that they care so much about other’s feelings. It didn’t bother us in the least that they won! Especially not that they beat Connor!
After a good Aussie pub lunch—we are not very systematically attempting to try every Australian beer there is—we headed off to the old Fremantle Prison, winner of several tourism awards and as far as we are concerned those awards must be due at least in part to Colin, our tour guide. Again we had a small group, Randy & me and an Aussie couple and their 7 year old girl.
As with most old prisons, conditions for the inmates were abysmal. Of course new prisons aren’t so hunky-dory either! I asked Colin if he was ever a guard at the prison (it only closed as a prison in 1991) and he told us they aren’t allowed to tell us because there might be ex-prisoners on their tours! I think he was, however. We got to see what you would expect—the cells, the solitary cells, the kitchens, the exercise yards—and what I didn’t expect, the execution chamber. The last hanging was in 1964 and it took approximately 60 seconds from the time the prisoner was taken from his cell until he was hanged. 60 seconds! They didn’t waste any time.
The little girl didn’t go into the execution chamber. I wish I hadn’t!