Allen Graham came along this week to tell us all about Fremantle in it’s early days – as described in a book that he has recently published called ‘Inns & Outs of Freo & It’s Hotels from 1829 to 1856’. Allen started his research for the book in 1983, and the end result is a trilogy which covers the period up to the mid-1900s. In his talk Allen dealt only with the 1st book (up to 1856) and it was most interesting and informative. The early free settlers of the Swan River Colony didn’t know what to expect, other than “snow covered mountains” (!), and all sorts of incidents befell them. For example, in 1829 The Marquis of Anglesea carrying 104 settlers and troops to Freo unluckily hit the rocks near the Swan River mouth and was wrecked. It was then used for a variety of purposes for about 3 years until it was finally destroyed in a storm. Alcohol was a huge problem amongst the common folk, and there were almost more pubs than people! Freo became very rough and ready in the 1840s and visiting whalers would spend a lot of money but didn’t behave well. Convicts were brought in from June 1850, and this caused inter-town rivalry in the Colony. In 1856 Governor Kennedy said that there were too many hotels and he tried to introduce legislation in an attempt to get them run by “men of impeccable character”. Women were to be excluded from running them and this caused huge problems. Marcus Clarke, a prominent writer in the 1860s, said that we were not a nation of slobs, just a nation of drunkards! Hopefully things have now improved!