I spent a lot of my childhood running around Beaconsfield; my parents had friends on McCleery Street with a sizeable back yard and palm trees. Men would have been off fishing and there’d be trestle tables outside with lots of people talking and eating fish and crabs that had been caught. Those nights - I remember beautiful cool summer breezes and the seafood being cooked in copper pots, probably taken from the laundry, over a fire.
The area had a very close community that did everything together; socialised, played sport. We were all very active in the South Fremantle football club. It was like ‘be part of it or die’. There was a bitter division - if you lived on one side of East St you were East Freo, the other was South Freo. Never the twain shall meet.