Fremantle
· urban exploration · urbex · suburban exploration · exploration · walking · draining · navy · oil pipes ·
In Fremantle, Western Australia, there is a hill just near the city that has for many years been the home to a number of oil bunkers. They have been decommissioned progressively over the last decade or so, the last about two years ago, and removal has begun. Luckily, the one's they've demolished so far were the `boring' ones lower down the hill towards Amherst Street. The three older ones up the hill are still there, surrounded by scrub and much frequented by painters.
One Friday in August, 2008, I went to see what I could see — with no predetermined notion of what that might be, naturally.
2008-08-29 13:34
I scaled the fence at the south-east corner of the site — my usual route to East Fremantle, actually — and strolled along the newly-dug sand towards my target.
This whole area (the extension of Edmund Street) has recently been excavated for the installation of new high-voltage underground power lines, and has lost its nice abandoned look: everything graded back to yellow sand, and nothing much growing any more. At least they didn't impinge upon the good stuff. I crawl through a low hole in the chainwire
and squat under a tea-tree to ponder this quiet, forgotten place. There is a big, rusty valve just here \photo[The rusty valve, guarding what is now a harmless stormwater drain, but which once carried the threat of fuel oil leakage.]{valve.jpg}, not locked, or damaged; just a little graffiti, which doesn't detract at all \photo[]{to_open.jpg}.
2008-08-29 13:48
I continue up the limestone rubble embankment, grateful to be getting further out of sight of the Western Power carpark, which has had a clear view of my position until now---not that I'm particularly concerned with being spotted. The view over the top \photo[Looking up over the top of the eastern embankment at one of the bunkers.]{looking_over_the_top.jpg} is quite impressive, these massive tanks feeling even more out of scale with the rest of the land when one is up close.
Emerging at the top of the embankment, out of the scrub, I'm looking out over a large concrete basin \photo[View of the concrete basin.]{concrete_basin.jpg}, maybe a couple of hundred metres across, with some wrecked shopping trollies in one corner, trees growing at the foot of the sloop that I'm standing at the top of \photo[Looking back at the where I was standing looking over the concrete basin; the drainage hole is under these trees.]{vicinity_of_hole.jpg}, and a sense of being in a less-frequented part of this site. The patina of graffiti that prevails in other quarters seems to be thinner here, and there's less junk; I guess most people go for more interesting places.
There's a strange steel roller or pulley thing up there, on a post \photo[A rusty pulley/roller thing at the top of an embankment at Bunker Hill.]{rusty_pulley_at_top.jpg}; I've no idea of what it could've been used for. I look around a bit and then slither down the concrete slope---letting go and giving total control to gravity and the low-ish friction of the palm leaf I was standing on. At the bottom there is a concrete-lined pit, about four by three metres and a bit over a metre deep. It looks like a sump or soakwell or something to do with water \photo[Stormwater drain, or just a hole.]{hole.jpg}. I climb down into the hole, to see what I can see. There's another pulley here \photo{lower_pulley.jpg}, also mounted on a steel post, above a broken concrete pipe outlet; it looks \photo{top_end_of_pipe.jpg} like there used to be a board that could drop down to block the pipe---I'm not sure why, given that there is that big valve at the other end.
I crawl back up out of the hole, away from the mosquitoes. Looking up, I can see a handful of young men, laughing and clicking spraycans back and forth in preparation for a spot of painting. Time to move on.
So I go for a walk along the inside of the embankment, a hundred metres or so, and then come back along the top — bashing through scrub and hanging over the edge at times, to get past trees. When I'm back where I started \photo{low_end_of_the_pipe.jpg}, and can see the big valve and its pipe in their context, I take a couple more photos \photo{looking_back_up_the_pipe.jpg}.
