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An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the detail.
Limestone walls, a Main Cell Block and 140 years of prisoners’ lives offer several ways into the story of Fremantle Prison.
On this page
Walyalup
Fremantle Prison stands on Walyalup, the land of the Whadjuk Noongar people. The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage acknowledges the Whadjuk Noongar people as its traditional custodians.
Aboriginal people were imprisoned here in large numbers: a Royal Commission in 1972–73 examined their treatment, and by 1984 they made up nearly half of the prison population.
Convict Establishment and gaol
Convicts built the prison from 1851 in limestone quarried on the site. Known as the Convict Establishment, it passed to the colonial government in 1886 and remained a prison until 30 November 1991.
From 1888 to 1984 its gallows were the only lawful place of execution in Western Australia.
One of eleven Australian Convict Sites
Fremantle Prison was entered on Western Australia’s heritage register in the 1990s, added to the National Heritage List in 2005 and inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2010 as one of the Australian Convict Sites. It is Western Australia’s only World Heritage-listed building.
This history belongs to the place and the people who shaped it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
