Built in 1932, the SEC Substation at 10 Parry Street once powered Fremantle’s electric trams before becoming the World of Energy power museum. Now the space crackles and hums with the words of storytellers across all genres.
With the move comes renewed energy to publish distinctively Western Australian stories, and a mission to open its doors to the community – starting with Fremantle Press’s Open Day on Friday 24 April.
The tale of the Press is a uniquely WA story, peopled with passionate individuals whose entrepreneurship and determination helped put WA writing on the map.
In Western Australia in the 1970s there was no internet, no email, no social media. Interstate phone calls were charged by the minute, and airfares were eye-wateringly expensive.
Imagine the difficulty for an aspiring writer from the west to get any cut-through with the big publishing houses in London, Melbourne and Sydney.
This was the reality for WA writers. But, in Fremantle, a handful of people had a dream – and in 1976 Fremantle Press was born.
A Tale of Two Publishing Houses by Linda Martin captures Fremantle Press’s first 20 years, describing the sense of possibility, the risk-taking and the changing tastes of readers. It is an industry where luck plays a part and a gamble can be rewarded.
In what other business would the arrival of a bundle of pages tied by waxed string look like the basis for a healthy bottom line? But Fremantle Press immediately grasped the potential of Albert Facey’s manuscript, and A Fortunate Life became an international hit. This bestselling life story was closely followed by another – My Place by Sally Morgan – and First Nations stories were suddenly integral to the national agenda.
With sales of both books outstripping the Press’s ability to meet demand, a short-term deal with Penguin Random House became the long-term partnership that underpins the Press’s success today. Was it the motley gang of threadbare readers and would-be writers in New Edition on Fremantle’s Cappuccino Strip who inspired the idea for an award for new WA writers?
The inaugural 1990 Award was named after T.A.G. Hungerford, the dashing war novelist and recipient of the Patrick White Award for Literature. Thirty-five years on, the award has seen Fremantle Press publish Kim Scott, Australia’s first Indigenous writer to win a Miles Franklin, New York Times bestselling novelist Natasha Lester, and STAN Invisible Boys series creator Holden Sheppard.
Since 2020, the Fogarty Literary Award for young writers with its generous prize money has also encouraged homegrown talent to stay in the West.
Publishing is an industry where threats must be faced as opportunities, requiring constant reinvention in the face of rising production costs and new technologies. Being small has always given the Press freedom to experiment. The Press had a comprehensive website before most publishers knew what the internet was, published one of Australia’s first ebooks, and pioneered QR codes in dual-language books, allowing readers to hear and read in language.
Thirty-five years ago, of the Press’s most unexpected heroes appeared in the form of a perambulating sausage, flanked by a cheery egg and a phalanx of baked beans. Far from being a snag, A Sausage Went for a Walk took children’s publishing in Western Australia from niche to national. Soon, instead of wabbits and cottage gardens, our books had numbats and Ningaloo, quolls and quokkas.
Observers have noted a distinctive style to the works of WA writers. Could it be that our wide-open skies, our endless coastline and our relative isolation inspires a distinctive creativity? For Philippa Nilulinsky, it is the breadth of our landscape, so beautifully captured by her over many decades, that is endlessly fascinating. Philippa is unique on Fremantle Press’s list for having published books in each of its five decades.
Now Philippa is investing in Fremantle Press’s thriving WA stories by offering a collection of four original 1970s artworks for our silent auction, ahead of her latest publication, Philippa Nikulinsky: The Seeker Who Walks.
Fremantle Press invites you to join Philippa and others by bidding on the Fremantle Press auction or donating to the building fund.
