Sam Tucker, Riding the Freo Doctor, Western Australia

The Fremantle Doctor, or ‘Freo Doctor’, is a breeze that races off the cool ocean and sweeps through the homes of south-west coastal areas of Western Australia. During the warmer months, the Doctor rises up from the south-west somewhere between midday and 3pm and makes it’s way inland, sometimes as far as 100km away from the coast.

The wind is so-named as it appears to come from Fremantle, a port city near Perth. The ‘Doctor’ part is in reference to the cooling effect the wind has on the area, (on rare occasion when the wind doesn’t show, the temperature can get up to 40 degrees celsius or 104 degrees Fahrenheit). Another rumoured origin of the name comes from days of old, when much of the city’s populous fell ill to disease and crematoria were established to dispose of corpses – the Doctor would blow the stench of burning human flesh inland, away from the coastal colonies.

For swimmers and sun-bakers, the Doctor means grains in the eyes and a whipping of the flesh. For residents of coastal towns it means a doz degrees knocked off the thermometer for the afternoon. For surfers, at certain breaks it means perfect cross-shore winds for flying over sections. West-Australian Sam Tucker, pictured here, loves the Freo Doctor.