Reproducing temples in Fremantle

Abstract

This paper explores the production and reproduction of a sacred-soliciting built environment in the Western Australian port town of Fremantle, drawing attention to temple iconography produced in the first century of European settlement and its preservation and reproduction at the hands of local and national heritage movements since the 1970s. I show how Fremantle’s High Street solicits a sense of the sacred in its visitors, operating in a similar fashion to temple complexes such as Sukuh in Java. From purifying passage through the Whalers Tunnel under the Round House (the temple’s porch), the visitor will be guided up High Street through an assemblage of neoclassical facades to Kings Square (the temple’s house) with its mix of artefacts for Anglican, Masonic and nation-building narratives. The reading continues up High Street to the War Memorial on Monument Hill (the temple’s Holy of Holies) for which a draft conservation plan was released in 2010.

Keywords:

• heritage studies
• urban planning
• built environment
• sacred-soliciting
• temple architecture

Notes

1. The lingga is now held at the National Museum in Jakarta.

2. At least 500 of the 5,000 Aborigines transported to Rottnest Island died there (Mickler 1990, pp. 90–97).

3. Kaufman (1987) argued that Victorian architecture, particularly its façades, was intended to be read like books containing abstract images of history in which representation of the Classic, for instance, was reduced to an essentialist pattern of pillar, base and arch. Abstract representation of architectural strength lead to superfluous masonry: a pillar, for example, would be represented in a superfluous way to signify greater strength than the pillar physically had.

4. The Freemasons played a major role in the production of Fremantle’s streetscape, indicated by the records of prominent people and buildings associated with Freemasonry in the local history photographic collection of the Fremantle City Library. For example, ‘Charles Alexander Manning, 1807–1869, came to Western Australia in the very early days and became the largest landowner in Fremantle. He was the first Grand Master of Freemasonry and the first honorary keeper of records and collector of rates for the Fremantle Town Trust’ (Charles Alexander Manning n.d.).

5. Watkin (1995, p. 407) argued that the rise in popularity of Freemasonry in Britain in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century may have been due to the membership of King George IV, his father and other royalty in Masonic orders and their patronage of Masonic architecture.

6. Opposite Monument Hill at 200 High Street is the former Anglican Fremantle Grammar School, founded and run from 1882 to 1897 by prominent Freemason and federationist Sir Henry Briggs (Manford, 1979).

7. This soliciting of the sacred on white male terms is anything but diminished by Solomon Street now running directly into Monument Hill along the Fremantle heights in the direction of the old Anglican Grammar School. The street name was changed on Fremantle maps from ‘Mary Road’ to ‘Solomon Street’ in 1951–1952 (Atwell, n.d.), presumably because Elias Solomon had lived in the street at a house called Ocean View. Solomon was a prominent local businessman, founding president of the Fremantle Hebrew Congregation, and Fremantle’s mayor in 1889–1891, 1896–1898 and 1900–1901 (Ocean View, n.d.).

8. I watched this video on 27 February 2011 in Fremantle Prison with other visitors before entering the tunnels under Monument Hill.