Author: fhs6160

Robert Nicholson – Captain Robert Laurie of Fremantle

Tuesday 24 March 5.00 – 6.00 pm
Refreshments available from 4.30 pm
Fremantle History Centre, Ground Floor, Walyalup Civic Centre

151 High St, Fremantle 6160

A Scottish born sailor, at fifteen Robert Laurie migrated to Australia to join the Adelaide Steamship Company which, in 1880, sent him to Fremantle where he worked as a stevedore before becoming a member of the Legislative Council and first Chairman of the Fremantle Harbour Trust. He fought to achieve proper marine standards to ensure the port attracted the patronage of international shipping.

Our speaker is the great grandson of Captain Laurie. The Hon. Robert Nicholson was born in 1937, his mother Betty, nee Davies, was a granddaughter of Captain Robert Laurie. His grandfather was a solicitor, John Nicholson, who emigrated from Scotland in 1896, establishing a law firm here. One of his sons, Edward, became a partner in 1927, and Edward’s son, Robert, joined the firm when he was admitted as a legal practitioner in 1960.

Robert (Bob) served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of WA from 1988 to 1994. He was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2001 for service to the judiciary, to education and to the community. Then the year after, was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), also for service to the judiciary and the law, to education, and to the community.

He has published a number of research papers before writing the story of his grandfather, ‘Shaping Australia’s West: The Life of John Nicholson’ and then ‘Captain Robert Laurie and the maritime development of Fremantle’ in 2025.

Mark it in your diaries:

Norm Marinovich – The History of Croatians in Fremantle
Tuesday 24 February 5.00 – 6.00 pm
* Note shorter time due to Library now closing at 6.00 pm
Nibbles and drinks at 5.00 pm; the talk starts at 5.15 pm

Fremantle History Centre, Ground Floor, Walyalup Civic Centre,
151 High Street, Fremantle 6160

Croatians have had a presence in Fremantle since the early 1800s. Their contribution to life in Fremantle was initially defined by their background of poverty in their homeland, but later by some of the skills they brought with them and later still by their efforts to integrate into the Australian way of life.

Dalmatia was the poorest part of what was then Yugoslavia, there was not much land, and what was there was very dry and unproductive. The people emigrating were tough and worked hard so they could send money back home to their families. Many immigrants went to the gold-fields but by the eve of the First World War groups of Slavs began to settle in Spearwood, the Swan Valley and Fremantle.

Norm and his brother Mike, were born here in Fremantle, their parents having emigrated around 1928. But after the Second World War, like many Slavic people, the family travelled back to Yugoslavia out of concern for their families there, and to help rebuild the country after the war. The constraints of living under Communist rule however, were difficult to tolerate, and the opportunities in Australia offered better prospects for their sons’ future. The family returned to Western Australia in 1952.

70 years later, come listen to Norm tell his story about his life, and the experience of being a Croatian immigrant in Western Australia.     

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