Gold rush warehouses and hotels, at the mouth of the Swan River, stand on narrow streets, and the harbour they were built for still works.
What Fremantle looks like
Fremantle's town centre is hotels, banks and old shipping warehouses, most of them two and three storeys on small blocks. About 250 of them are inside the West End heritage area, twenty hectares either side of .
Most of the buildings in the town centre date from the 1880s and 1890s. The University of Notre Dame now occupies and has restored many of them.
above Bathers Beach dates from 1831. , convict built on The Terrace, closed as a working prison in 1991.
Container cranes stand across the water from the timber wharf and cargo sheds on . The fishing fleet is a kilometre south in the , behind a breakwater built in 1919.
Away from the centre, the larger commercial buildings give way to smaller houses. has two storey terraces in limestone and red brick with iron lace balconies. , off South Terrace, has single storey cottages with corrugated roofs. has nineteenth century houses and the Fremantle Arts Centre, which convicts built in the 1860s as an asylum.
Shot in Fremantle
Reckless is a four part SBS and NITV thriller set in Fremantle and shot there in 2025. The 2019 film Below shot at Fremantle Prison on The Terrace.
Reckless, 2025
Played Fremantle
Reckless was shot on location in Fremantle in 2025, and the Downtown and West End streets are in it. Charlie's record shop, Hilda's Records, was built for the series at the corner of Bannister Street and Market Street on the Cappuccino Strip. It took a week to put up. June meets the private detective at the Fremantle Buffalo Club on High Street. The interior of the show's Queen Victoria Hotel is Bar Orient in the West End. The series also used the Woolstores on Cantonment Street, the North Mole Lighthouse and Fremantle Oval.
Port Adelaide's nineteenth century stone and brick warehouses and shopfronts sit two and three storeys on a flat reclaimed grid, the same scale and materials as Fremantle's gold rush town centre. Commercial Road and Lipson Street carry cast iron lace balconies close to Fremantle's own verandahs, and a working wharf still sits a short walk from both main streets. Port Adelaide's ground level was raised about three metres over old mud flats, so some shopfronts sit a half storey below the modern street, a detail with no Fremantle equivalent to match in a wide shot. Try searching stone and brick warehouses now.
Stanley Dock's Victorian warehouses and granite dock towers at the mouth of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal share Fremantle's iron and brick wharf buildings and its mix of working harbour and heritage street. Captain America, The First Avenger used the dock as a 1940s Brooklyn wharf, so the same stonework and ironwork have already stood in for an overseas port on screen. The warehouses themselves run up to five storeys, taller than anything in Fremantle's own two and three storey town centre, and the dock is paved in cobbles rather than the asphalt and brick paths around Fremantle's quay, so a shot that stays close on the water's edge holds the match better than a full street block. Try searching Victorian warehouses granite dock towers now.
Het Eilandje's nineteenth century red brick warehouses and water basins sit at a similar two to three storey scale to Fremantle's own port buildings, and both grew up around cargo moving through a working dock. Large parts of the district have been converted into apartments, restaurants and the MAS museum since the 2000s, so a frame has to work around the glass additions and the crowds near the museum to hold the period. Keep to the older brick warehouse fronts along the water basins rather than the MAS museum end, where modern glass and crowds would need dressing out of any wide shot. Try searching red brick water basins now.
