Woodman Point
Woodman Point is some 8km south of Fremantle along Cockburn Road. It technically marks the northern extent of Cockburn Sound though waters to the north up to Fremantle Harbour are generally considered to be part of the Sound.The beach has not been legally approved for skinny dipping but nude bathing occurs here. The beach has two sections - one north of the point on Owen Anchorage, and another south of the point on Jervoise Bay.
Woodman Light, a lighthouse built in 1902, is located just beyond the eastern boundary of the reserve. The light is on small hill to the East side of Cockburn Road and nearby are stone cottages used to house the lighthouse keepers.
Woodman Point was named after Thomas Woodman who accompanied Captain James Stirling on the 1827 HMS Success expedition which explored the upper reaches of the Swan River. When Stirling returned in 1829 with the first settlers for the Swan River Colony, Woodman Point would have been one of the first mainland landmarks sighted by the new arrivals.
Woodman Point has an intriguing history and features in Nyoongar creation stories. Behind Jervoise Bay beach is the John Graham Recreation Reserve. Nearby are numerous historic sites from the period when Woodman Point was used as a Quarantine Station and ammunition store.
Munitions bunkers, located in a munitions reserve East of the quarantine station, were actively used for that purpose until the 1980s when the facility was de-commissioned and moved to Karnup, southeast of Rockingham. By that time the Navy had also established its own facility at HMAS Stirling on Garden Island.
A dedicated railway spur line to service the munitions reserve originally ran parallel to Cockburn Road past Coogee Beach to South Fremantle and then to the inner harbour of the Port of Fremantle which was a major allied naval base during World War II. Removal of the munitions reserve was necessary prior to developing nearby land into the residential suburb now known as Coogee.
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The quarantine station was established in the 1880s to isolate immigrants from the community whilst being cleared of smallpox, bubonic plague and Spanish influenza which was ravaging Europe, the Americas and Asia. The facility continued to be used intermittently as a quarantine station until about 1979 when it closed. The dormitories and most other buildings are currently in use for school and other groups and now known as Woodman Point Recreation Camp.
Woodman Point is in the suburb of Munster. The suburb was named in 1954 from the original name of Lake Coogee being Lake Munster, which was named after Prince William, Earl of Munster, and later King William IV. The District had been known as South Coogee since the 1870s and this earlier name remains in use by older settlers of the area. The District contains the site of Thomas Peel's original settlement, the Clarence townsite, the first recorded land grants in the Cockburn area, and around Lake Coogee the remains of the cottages built by the Pensioner Guards in the 1880s.
For a short time in the 1980s, some residents lobbied the State Government to change the name of the suburb due to the popularity of an American television sitcom of the same name which depicted the home life of a family of benign monsters. The series was a satire of both traditional monster movies and the wholesome family fare of the era and ran concurrently with the similarly macabre themed The Addams Family. The Munsters' 70 episodes, produced from 1964 to 1966, were featured in the line-up of shows screened by Channel Nine when it began broadcasting in Perth on 12th June 1965.
