Drillers started taking core samples near Clontarf Hill this week. Photo by Stephen Pollock

THE Fremantle eastern bypass is back on the agenda, but this time as a tunnel under Fremantle.

The Herald has confirmed that WA main roads has been instructed by the Barnett government to cost a route connecting Roe and Stirling highways through the hearts of Beaconsfield and White Gum Valley.

Contractors started taking core samples from four locations this week; the base of Clontarf Hill and Mather, Wood and Forrest Streets.

Eagle-eyed reader Suzanne spotted the drilling rig near the hill Thursday morning and says contractors told her the plan was to drill a tunnel under Fremantle.

Intrigued, the Herald asked the drillers what they were up to. They clammed up and gave us a card for Perth Freight Link “stakeholder engagement manager” Errol Considine.

When the Herald rang he said he was heading into a meeting and would call back. He didn’t.

The Herald called Friends of Clontarf Hill stalwart Christine Duckham to get her take on the issue: our call was the first she’d heard of it and she was devastated to learn the hill might again be under threat from major roadworks.

She rang the department and after getting the third degree to ensure she was an affected landowner, a staffer revealed the plan.

“He said the government has asked Main Roads to get contractors to cost that route into Fremantle as an extension of Roe 8—so I guess it’s Roe 9,” Ms Duckham told the Herald.

“He did say that there was a tunnel through Clontarf Hill and they’d been asked to cost it, and that’s as much information as I got.”

She says her Friends group has just spent 18 months working on long-term plans for the hill, including signage recognising its heritage, and she’s gutted by the prospect of a major highway tunnelling into it.

Fremantle state Labor MP Simone McGurk says the only conclusion to be drawn is that main roads is thinking of replacing the Perth Freight Link route currently planned for Stock Road—and linking with Stirling Highway via High Street—with a tunnel under the port city.

“It highlights the paucity of the planning and the business case of the Perth Freight Link,” she told the Herald.

She says last-minute changes like this make it even more evident the Abbott government allocated nearly one billion dollars of public funds to what was a half-baked, ill-thought through project.

“The whole link project has been characterised by chaos and dysfunction,” she told the Herald.

Ms McGurk says more focus is needed on a second port, not “more and bigger roads in the existing port”.

“Even their own business planning says that by 2021 we will need it. That’s not that far away.”

She revealed Labor had previously considered tunnelling under the city, with former planning minister Alannah MacTiernan telling her it shouldn’t be ruled out because costs were falling.

Perth currently has plenty of experienced tunnellers who’ve been working on the Northbridge link and will soon start work on the Forrestfield airport link, but will be idle when that’s completed in 2020.

Fremantle mayor Brad Pettitt says a tunnel under Fremantle has merit, and had been proposed by the council years ago to stop the bypass cutting the city in half, but “it should be a rail link”.

by STEVE GRANT