Ever wondered what went on inside the P&O Hotel in Fremantle’s West End? Now’s your chance to find out.
Ever wondered what went on inside the P&O Hotel in Fremantle’s West End? Now’s your chance to find out.
By Mark Naglazas
September 22, 2025 — 3.00am
Fremantle born-and-raised fine art printer and artist Joe Landro has been walking past the P&O Hotel in the West End his whole life, but can’t remember anything inside one of the port city’s most recognisable buildings.
“I recall a cooking school in one part of the building,” Landro says.
“But for the life of me I can’t think of anything being in there before that. I would walk past and wonder what it looked like inside and why it wasn’t being used.”
So it was hardly surprising that when Fremantle Biennale artistic director Tom Muller invited Landro to be a part of Room Service, an end-of-festival spectacular in which 42 artists and performers will take over the hotel’s rooms, hallways, bathrooms and the balcony, he would jump at the chance.
“It would allow me to explore a building that had intrigued me forever,” Landro says during a walk-through of the long-dormant building that sits on the corner of High and Mouat Streets.
“I’ve been inside a lot of abandoned buildings in Freo, but I had never been inside this one. And I wasn’t disappointed.”
Landro is not quite accurate in his recollection. Built in 1906 on the site of a colonial-era boarding house, the P&O Hotel has been through several iterations and passed through a number of different hands, most recently being used by Notre Dame University for student accommodation.
In 2023, it was bought by Nic Trimboli and Adrian Fini, the team behind successful Fremantle hospitality venues such as Little Creatures, Bread in Common and Vin Populi, and who are in the process of waking up the sleeping beauty and transforming it into a hotel to serve Australia’s recently anointed top tourism town (one corner is taken up by the Trimboli/Fini venture Ode to Sirens).
However, before the renovators move in, Trimboli and Fini have handed over the keys of the P&O to Muller and his Fremantle Biennale team and given them licence run amok for the final weekend of the portside arts festival.
Among the mischief -makers are former Perth Festival artistic director Iain Grandage and his wife and fellow cellist Mel Robinson who will be performing seafarers lament in one of the bathrooms; visual artist and tattooist Sam Bloor will be leaving his mark on willing punters; opera singer Penny Shaw will be on the balcony the story of a young woman who came from England to Australia with the idea of becoming a performer.
Leading West Australian architect Nic Bunsdon will be recreating what it would have been like to have visited Fremantle during the days of the Swan River Colony, including commissioning a signature scent that will be wafting around his appointed room.
“Our studio does a lot of work in the hospitality space, so I thought we could use our research and insights into receiving guests and experiencing place to create the kind of in-depth experience of travel that Gen Y are demanding, It also chimes with the theme of this year’s Biennale — sanctuary,” says Brunsdon, whose company won the world’s best hotel for a Bali resort.
“Gen Y are wanting to travel more lightly, more sustainably, more responsibly. So we have looked at the idea of how you travel well and use tourism for a force of good.
“So our contribution is a response to Fremantle as a pre-colonial setting, to imagine what Fremantle was like before we came here.”
In contrast, artist and political activist Kate Hulett is creating a work that deals with what she believes is an increasingly heavy presence of police in our lives.
“Our beginnings are as a penal colony, which has something that has continued through today,” she says.
“We need policing, of course. What I worry about is that we are over-policed and it becomes part of our psyche. We police ourselves, we police our neighbours, we become ‘dobbers’.”
“My room will have images that reflect the tenuous hold the police have over us. It will be harsh and maybe a bit violent.”
The idea for Room Service came from a group who regularly use the P&O Hotel for their meetings – the Fremantle Culture Council, which includes Brunsdon, Hulett and Sarah Booth, of the urban renewal organisation Spacemarket and community engagement lead for Fini’s Human Urban, which is in the process of transforming Elders Wool Stores into a mixed used precinct (it has now been dubbed Elder Place).
“We have had the privilege of meeting in this grand building and talking about Fremantle. So we hatched the idea of Room Service to invite others in and share that privilege,” says Booth.
“So many people walk past and wonder what it is like inside. Now they can see it for themselves.”
Taking over the P&O is very much in keeping with the mission statement of the Biennale, in which every two years since 2017 Muller and his team challenge artists to respond to under-utilised and under-appreciated Fremantle/Walyalup spaces and buildings.
The other major precinct at this year’s Fremantle Biennale is Manjaree/Bathers Beach, which will spring be activated by artworks, installations and activities, including a seaside sound sauna, live music, workshops and an ocean-facing community kitchen.
“I like to think of what we are doing is re-imagining or re-enchanting buildings like these. I’m really excited by singing a building back into existence again through a whole cohort of artists,” says Muller.
One of the most interesting aspects of the project is that the artists will be spending the month before their two-night residency in the building, which means that dozens of Perth’s most creative minds will be working cheek-by-jowl preparing their particular contributions.
“There’s a really unique opportunity for synergy and alchemy,” says Room Service creative producer Odetta Davison.
“It will be reminiscent of being in school together or living in shared communities,” explains Davison.
While the Biennale will enliven and enrich Fremantle for three weeks in November the organisers and artists believe the impact of happenings such as Room Service will be longer lasting.
“Fremantle was once a boom town, with money and investment and a vibrant community. This is who we were,” says Brunsdon.
“Now there are all these buildings throughout the city that are full of cobwebs, dust and pigeon shit.
“The public will be able to see the first floor of a beautiful building in the centre of Fremantle that is activated — that is brimming with life and activity, with people experiencing unexplored spaces and walking on the balcony.
“And while they are walking through the building they will be able to dream about what their city could be.”
Room Service is on at the P&O Hotel on November 29 and 30. The first release has sold out. Another batch of tickets will be on sale from October 10. The Fremantle Biennale runs from November 13 to 30.
Mark Naglazas is a journalist specialising in Perth culture and the arts.