Friday 21 October 2011

Fremantle Part 1 - the Markets

Listen very carefully ... while in Perth, you must and I repeat, you MUST go to Fremantle. If you don't, you missed out 75% of the fabulosity of what Perth has to offer. This is my personal opinion of course.


Fremantle is a harbour town and is just about 30-35 mins drives from Perth City. Since we already have a rented car, we drive all the way to Fremantle. Actually there is a better way to make your way there. According to Rose, the best way is to catch a ferry from downtown (near Bell Tower) to Fremantle and catch a train back. The reason is because, while you get to enjoy a ferry trip, you also get to view the beautiful side of this harbour town which you couldn't have catch using road. So, we missed that part but that's OK. Next time perhaps.


Since Fremantle is such a fabulous town and I don't even know how to begin, I decided to break it into 3 parts. So, Part I is about the markets. Somehow when you ask someone where to go in Fremantle, the first thing they say is go to the markets. So, here we are.


There are actually 2 markets in Fremantle. The more established one (which was established since 1897) is the Fremantle Market. They call this the Grand Dame of the heritage buildings in Fremantle since Fremantle is full of heritage buildings.

For me however, the Fremantle Market really is more like a farmer's market. So unless you are looking for fresh produce, this market doesn't really fancy tourist.



But being a shopaholic me, I still managed to find something amusing to bring home like this wheat head.


The wheat head will look like this a week after I water him everyday. So now I get to cut his hair (I mean wheat) whichever way I want and released the inner stylist in me. So, technically this can be consider a 'fresh produce' right?

The second market in Fremantle is the E-Shed market. Now this market is more applicable to tourist because they sell all the tourist stuff, you know like the t-shirts, caps, fridge magnets, koala bear huggies etc etc etc. So if you are looking for handicrafts or souvenirs to bring home so you can show off you've been to Australia, this is the place to be.


And you know you're in the right tourist market when all you see is not Australians but fellow Asian tourists with a bag pack, grabbing whatever while mooning over how cute or funny those things are. Yes, I'm one of them. I mean 10 little koala huggies only for AUD1.80! So cheap and so cute!!!







Location : Perth, Western Australia
Next, Fremantle Part II - the Fishing Boat Harbour