Paradigm Shift or a Drop in the Ocean? The America's Cup Impact on Fremantle

Abstract

Hallmark events are deemed to be exceptional and to have dramatic impacts for the communities involved with them. Whereas studies abound that examine their more immediate effects, there are few that re-visit a community to evaluate the long-term or enduring effects. This paper presents a discussion of the impact of the America's Cup defence that hit Fremantle in Western Australia like a tsunami when Alan Bond's Australia II wrested the Cup from the New York Yacht Club in 1983, some twenty-nine years ago. This discussion takes the form of two distinct perspectives. One views the America's Cup as the catalyst of mythological proportions that changed the city's direction from a sleepy, rundown heritage port into a major tourist destination. The other views the Cup as just another wave, surfing along on the underlying global swells of changing technology and gentrification. This ethnographic paper looks back to before the Cup win in 1983 (and its loss again in 1987) and at Fremantle post-Cup to explore these two versions of Fremantle's genesis as a tourist city.

Key Words:

• Hallmark events
• America's Cup
• Fremantle
• globalization
• tourism policy and planning
• gentrification
• tourism development
• urban development
• Australia
• tourism impacts