Fremantle is a port city in Western Australia, located at the mouth of the Swan River in the metropolitan area of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth. In 2016, Fremantle had a population of approximately 29,000. The Western Australian vernacular diminutive for Fremantle is Freo.
Prior to British settlement, the indigenous Noongar people inhabited the area for millennia, and knew it by the name of Walyalup. Visited by Dutch explorers in the 1600s, Fremantle was the first area settled by the Swan River colonists in 1829, and is named after Captain Charles Fremantle, an English naval officer who claimed the west coast of New Holland as British territory. The settlement struggled in its first decades, and in 1850, with the advent of penal transportation to the colony, Fremantle became Australia's primary destination for convicts. The convict-built Fremantle Prison operated long after transportation ended in 1868, and is now a World Heritage Site.