University of Notre Dame (campus)

During the 1980s much of Fremantle's West End was adapted to become Australia's first private Catholic University. The emergence of private tertiary education institutions followed a broader trend in Australia during the late 1980s. In 1987 Bond Corporation, in conjunction with a Japanese entity established Australia's first private university - Bond University - on the Gold Coast in Queensland. 

Planning for Notre Dame began in the mid 1980s and was again backed by another Western Australian entrepreneur; Catholic businessman Denis Horgan. Using money borrowed from Catholic ministries and a 30 million dollar loan from R & I Bank, Horgan began purchasing Fremantle properties, ranging from hotels, warehouses and parking lots. These buildings were seen to hold potential for educational purposes, as Peter Tannock explains "although many of the old buildings were derelict or in poor repair, they held the promise of development as large-space educational facilities. Many were also relatively cheap to purchase, because there were few other obvious alternative uses for them in the then depressed post-America’s Cup Fremantle real estate market." (Peter Tannock, The Founding and Establishment of the University of Notre Dame Australia: 1986-2014 (2014), 5.)

Attracted to what Rev. Edward Malloy, President and founding figure of Notre Dame from 1987 to 2005, described as the prevailing "pioneer spirit," in a"land of entrepreneurs and risk-takers," Fremantle's "Bohemian quality," and recent America's Cup upgrades to the heritage fabric provided the ideal scaffold for the insertion of a private campus. (Edward A. Malloy C.S.C., The University of Notre Dame: The Dream Renewed: The First Three Years 1988-1991 (2007), 13.)  There were also preliminary proposals to move to a new undergraduate campus with permanent residential boarding from scratch at a site at Alkimos Beach (now a major housing subdivision) some 50km north of Perth after the university had established itself in Fremantle. (24)

For more on the history of the university click here.