Off the port and in for a yarn

Fran Herold looks around the darkened interior of the old home of the Fremantle Workers Social and Leisure Club.

Beer glasses are stacked in trays, tables are piled high with bits and pieces, and behind the bar are framed photos of club committee members from the 1940s.

For Ms Herold, 89, the club has been a home away from home for more than half a century.

"I'm going to miss this old place," Ms Herold said.

The club, founded in 1914, is moving its treasures out of its Henry Street home to prepare for a new era.

The club was for years a magnet for the army of port workers who earned a living through the sweat of their labour and then cooled down with a beer.

It was also the place where they would debate politics and life, and the club became part of the fabric of the community.

What was missing for many years was the regular presence of women.

Deborah Gare and Jane Davis' history of the club says visiting rights for women were finally introduced in 1959, although women were banned from the bar and had to stay in the visitors' lounge. Ms Herold well remembers those days.

"There was a room out the front, a little hole in the wall, and they would give us our drinks through that," she said.

"I would mostly come down on Sundays to have a day out and my girlfriends would come down.

"There would be a table of women and I would sit out there."

Davis and Gare said women made gradual inroads, with the ladies' darts team, the Red Darts, chalking up numerous triumphs, and in 1985 the passage of sex discrimination legislation ensured club rules removed references to gender.

But the changing face of the port and decline of its manual workforce led to a decline in the club's membership and fortunes, until it closed its doors in 2011.

Its demise was short-lived and under the guidance of new president Don Whittington, it made a remarkable comeback.

Mr Whittington said to begin with, he urged his friends and the local community to return, chiefly using the lure of live music.

The shows were attended by a younger crowd who liked what they saw and membership recovered from being in the 400s to more than 800.

But to ensure its longer-term revival, the club put its old building on the market and is operating out of the South Fremantle Football Club while it finalises a new home at Fremantle Park.

Ms Herold said during the time the club was shut, she didn't go out. "I had nowhere, when it opened up again I was as pleased as punch," she said.

Another long-time member, Barry Coates, said the revival was "the best thing to have happened in Freo".

For him the reason the club would survive was plain.

"It's the people," he said. "They are magnificent."