Come, take a stroll the Fremantle way.

For a start, it’s not Friday in these parts of Western Australia: it’s Purple Friday.

And it’s fair to say on the eve of the AFL club’s first home preliminary final, the Fremantle locals are getting a tad carried away.

There’s the butcher selling purple sausages.

You can wash the snags down with a Docker-cino.

The meal can be served on purple plates and purple place-mats, perhaps at one of the myriad of cafes and restaurants bedecked in Fremantle’s favourite colour.

Inevitably, the meal can be completed with a slice of pavlova.

But don’t try and tell the locals the meringue dessert dish was actually named after Russian ballet dancer, Anna Pavlova, in the 1920s: Freo fans maintain it’s named after Dockers captain Matthew Pavlich.

Pavlich’s club is omnipresent on Purple Friday in the port city at the mouth of the Swan River – in a remarkable oversight, the river retains its name despite Fremantle’s opposition on Saturday being the Sydney Swans.

Step inside the historic Fremantle Markets in a grand old building – dare we say, Victorian-styled – and there is literally a haze of purple, a colour commonly associated with royalty and piety.

The local ABC radio network set up camp there on Purple Friday, giving out purple balloons to people dressed in purple shirts, with purple scarves and purple hats.

Down the main street in Fremantle, walk past businesses themed in purple, but not just with the normal streamers and balloons.

There are purple clothes everywhere: fancy a purple suit or jacket? No problem. You can even get some of those purple braces, ties, shirts, socks and jocks to go with them.

There’s purple dresses. Purple ugg boots. Even purple mannequins.

You can admire a purple bike, complete with a Fremantle Dockers seat and associated livery. But it’s not for sale: it will be auctioned after the AFL grand final.

And, in these parts, its danger to suggest the Dockers won’t reach their first grand final by accounting for the Swans: the locals look at you like you have been drinking – not red wine, of course, but purple.