Making my way up a creaky, carpeted staircase, I step into what feels like a different world – a building I’ve passed hundreds of times yet never set foot in. I am standing on the first level of Fremantle’s former P&O hotel, and am immediately taken aback by its weathered, almost cinematic beauty: tall stained-glass windows, dark timber mouldings and an iron-framed balcony peering over High Street like some forgotten lookout.
First built about 1870 and renovated during the gold-rush era, for almost a century this building was a magnet for wharfies and crewmen, with its 31 rooms and a raucous sailors’ bar known as the Cockpit. But despite being in the centre of Fremantle’s busiest street, this historical relic has largely remained empty and off-limits for decades.
