Fremantle Markets

The main hall is arranged around permanent market stalls: groceries, clothing, and crafts sit side by side here under one roof. Behind the hall lies a fruit and vegetable courtyard that grew out of Farmer's Lane. The shared stone building accommodates regular retail trade, while fresh vegetables and fruit are set out in the courtyard.

Behind the stone arches, there were already no market stalls by the early nineteen seventies. The City Council opened a covered market here in June eighteen ninety-eight: the port's population was growing, and traders needed a shared place where they could receive and sell meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit. In the nineteen fifties, wholesale trade moved to Perth. The last company used the building to pack and distribute food, then moved out. By nineteen seventy-four, the market was empty.

City engineer Ken Bott, responsible for roads, pressed for the building to be demolished. He wanted a signalized intersection between Henderson Street and South Terrace in its place. City planner Robert Henwood proposed bringing the market back here. He was supported by people campaigning to preserve old Fremantle: the Fremantle Society, founded two years earlier, had already elected its members to the City Council. The council adopted Henwood's proposal, and Bott's plan remained on paper.

But the empty building needed traders and someone to take responsibility for its upkeep. The council received three applications. Entrepreneur John Murdoch, co-owner of Donaldson & Murdock, was already involved in commercial real estate in Fremantle. He proposed creating retail stalls modeled on markets his partners had studied in London and San Francisco, and leased the building.

The risk was shared. With a twenty-five-thousand-dollar federal grant, the council repaired the walls, roof, and facades; Murdoch's company refitted the interior for future tenants. On October thirty-first, nineteen seventy-five, the doors opened for the start of the city festival. Murdoch's team set up about one hundred forty stalls here, selling groceries, meat, fish, clothing, and crafts. Fruit and vegetable sellers were assigned the rear courtyard, which became known as Farmer's Lane. On the first day of trading, cars filled the streets outside and shoppers filled the passageways inside.

The rear fruit and vegetable courtyard of today's market grew out of that Farmer's Lane. Permanent retail stalls still stand in the main stone hall—the very stalls Murdoch's team used to fill the empty building instead of a signalized intersection.