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Newcastle, NSW



Knobbys Head lighthouse


Port Stephens


Hunter Valley vineyards


The Entrance, Central Coast


Lake Macquarie


Tank traps on Stockton Beach


Tin City, Stockton Beach


Catherine Hill Bay village


Coal seam in the cliffs at Catherine Hill Bay

With a population exceeding half a million, Newcastle is the seventh largest and the second oldest city in Australia and the second largest in the state of New South Wales. It is the largest coal export harbour in the world and boasts massive coal deposits which cover much of the region beyond the city. It is also home to the most beaches in Australia - there are over twenty from Lake Macquarie to Port Stephens - and it's the predominant city within the Hunter Valley region. Newcastle was nominated 9th in Lonely Plant's 2011 list of Top 10 cities in the world as tourist destinations.

Where is it?: New South Wales: Central Coast. Newcastle is 160 km north of Sydney. Newcastle is connected to surrounding cities by the Sydney-Newcastle Freeway (South), New England Highway (West) and the Pacific Highway (North). Hourly train services operate between Sydney and Newcastle.

Lookouts: Fort Scratchley Historic Site is perhaps Newcastle’s most significant historical landmarks and one of the best vantage points for a duel view of the harbour and beaches.

Things to see and do:

The beach culture is strong in Newcastle, which has three distinctly different sandy city beaches. They’re interlinked by one great coastal walk called Bathers Way. Bathers Way highlights Newcastle beaches that have generated some of the World’s best surfers, but also features rugged cliffs and reefs, rock pools, huge salt water ocean baths, heritage sites and parklands.

Newcastle has more artists for its population than anywhere in Australia, and ita Regional Gallery has the second largest collection of art in NSW. Between our Regional Gallery and a host of private galleries, you can immerse yourself in art in Newcastle, all day.

One of Newcastle’s defining features is its busy harbour port. This city is the biggest exporter of coal in the world. Here you can sit and watch the port in action and be amazed as giant 300m freight ships, close enough to touch, are guided into the Harbour by comparatively tiny tugs and a pilot flown out to each ship by helicopter. Sharing the harbour with coal ships are freight ships, fishing boats, ferries and private vessels, making for a chaotic but exciting scene.

Surrounding area:

The Hunter Valley (48km west) is Australia’s oldest and one of its most well-known wine regions. Here you will find world-class Hunter Valley Semillon that has been called “Australia’s unique gift to the world’ and great Australian Shiraz. Add to this a wide array of traditional and contemporary delights expected of a world famous wine region, and you have one of the most interesting of destinations in the state. Hunter Valley Wine Country >>

Port Stephens (56km north east) promotes itself as the "blue water paradise" because of the beauty of its marine surroundings. With over 30 km of clean, white, sandy beaches, Port Stephens boasts vibrant tourism and fishing industries. Port Stephens is a naturally beautiful area, with plenty of reasons to visit all year round. More >>

From Broken Bay at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River to south of Newcastle, the Central Coast includes a mix of bays and inlets, pristine beaches, lakes and lush hinterland. The region’s laid-back atmosphere stems from the fact that life here is all about swimming, surfing, fishing or sailing, or simply relaxing at one of the waterfront cafés or restaurants. More >>

Stockton Beach is located north of the Hunter River. The length of the beach, its generally hard surface and numerous items of interest along the beach make it popular with four-wheel drive enthusiasts. The beach is also popular with fishermen and several different varieties of fish may be caught. Over many years Stockton Beach has been the site of numerous shipwrecks and aircraft crash sites. In World War II it was fortified against a possible attack by Imperial Japanese forces. Many of these fortifications can still be seen along the beach. Wreckage from many shipwrecks continues to wash ashore periodically but the most well known, recognisable and permanent of the wrecks are the Uralla and the Sygna.
A unique shanty town known as Tin City is situated 11 km south west of Anna Bay on Stockton Beach. Comprised of a series of tin shacks, it was used for several scenes in the 1979 movie Mad Max. More >>

Catherine Hill Bay is a unique coastal village on the Wallarah Peninsula, which lies between Lake Macquarie and the Pacific Ocean. The village, a beautifil welcoming place, consists mostly of modest timber miners' cottages, some dating from the 19th Century and remnant infrastructure from almost 140 years of underground coal mining, set in a dramatic natural landscape of bush and heath beside the Pacific Ocean. More >>


About Newcastle

Newcastle is located on the southern bank of the Hunter River at its mouth. The northern side is dominated by sand dunes, swamps and multiple river channels. A 'green belt' protecting plant and wildlife flanks the city from the west (Watagan mountains) around to the north where it meets the coast just north of Stockton. Because of this, urban development is mainly restricted to the hilly southern bank. The small village of Stockton sits opposite central Newcastle at the river mouth and is linked by ferry. Much of the city is undercut by the coal measures of the Sydney sedimentary basin, and what were once numerous coal-mining villages located in the hills and valleys around the port have merged into a single urban area extending southwards to Lake Macquarie.
The metropolitan area of Newcastle spreads over several Local Government Areas. The estimated population of the City of Newcastle at June 2004 was 145,633 (Australian Bureau of Statistics), but its neighbour, the City of Lake Macquarie, was actually larger, with an estimated 189,196 residents as of June 2004. The combined population of the Newcastle area at the 2001 census was 470,610. This includes Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Port Stephens and Cessnock local government areas.
The Port of Newcastle is crucial to the economic life of Newcastle and the Hunter Valley region beyond. Over 70 million tonnes of coal is shipped through the facility each year - making it the largest coal exporting port in the world. The Port of Newcastle claims to be Australia's first port. Coal was first exported from the harbour in 1799, 11 years after the start of European settlement in Australia.
Newcastle has an active youth music culture and was actually the most active music scene per capita in the whole world at one point. Silverchair, the highly successful Australian band, hail from Newcastle as do ska band The Porkers. Hip-hop trio Beken Of Cowes have also helped to put Newcastle on the map as the hip-hop capital of Australia. Bon Scott & The Young Brothers all of AC/DC spent some of their childhood there. It also has one of the most fertile punk and hardcore scenes in Australia.

History: Newcastle and The Hunter Valley were traditionally occupied by the Awabakal and Worimi Aboriginal People. The first European to explore the area was Lt. John Shortland in September, 1797. His discovery of the area was largely accidental; Shortland had been sent in search of a number of convicts who had seized the Cumberland as she was sailing from Sydney Cove. While returning he entered what he later described as "a very fine river" which he named after New South Wales' Governor, John Hunter. Shortland also returned with reports of the deep-water port and abundant coal in the area. Over the next two years, coal mined from the area was the New South Wales colony's first export.
Newcastle was nicknamed "Hell" by the most brutal convicts as it was a place where the most dangerous convicts were sent to dig in the coal mines as harsh punishment for their crimes. By the turn of the century the mouth of the Hunter River was being visited by diverse groups of men, including coal hewers, timber-cutters, and more escaped convicts. Philip Gidley King, Governor of New South Wales from 1800, decided on a more positive approach to exploit the now obvious natural resources of the Hunter Valley.
Besides coal, vast cedar forests covered a huge tract up the Hunter, a source of urgently needed building timber for the infant Sydney colony. Governor King decided to establish a small post at the river mouth, however this first settlement was short lived. It was headed by one Corporal Wixtead, who was then suddenly replaced by Surgeon Martin Mason. Surgeon Mason's rule ended in a mutiny, and Governor King closed the settlement early in 1802.
A settlement was again attempted in 1804 as a place of secondary punishment for unruly convicts. The settlement was named Coal River and then re-named Newcastle, after England's famous coal port. The name first appeared by the commission issued by Governor King on 15th March 1804, to Lieut. Charles Menzies of the Royal Marines, appointing him superintendent of the new settlement. The new settlement comprising convicts and a military guard, arrived at the Hunter River on 27th March 1804, in three ships, the Lady Nelson, the Resource and the James. The convicts were rebels from the 1804 Castle Hill convict rebellion, also known as the second Battle of Vinegar Hill.
The link with Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, its namesake and also from whence many of the 19th century coal miners came, is still obvious in some of the place-names - such as Jesmond, Hexham, Wickham and Wallsend.
Newcastle remained a penal settlement for nearly 20 years. The military rule was harsh, often barbarous, and there was possibly no more notorious place of punishment in the whole of Australia than Limeburners' Bay, on the inner side of Stockton peninsula, where incorrigibles were sent to burn oyster shells for making lime. Under Captain James Wallis, commandant from 1815 to 1818, the convicts' conditions improved, and a building boom began. Capt. Wallis laid out the streets of the town, built the first church of the site of the present Anglican Cathedral, erected the old gaol on the seashore, and began work on the breakwater which now joins Nobby's to the mainland. The quality of these buildings was poor and only (a much reinforced) breakwater survives.
For these works, and for his humane rule in the convict colony, Capt. Wallis earned the personal commendation of Governor Macquarie. In Governor Macquarie's opinion the prison colony was too close to Sydney and in any case the proper exploitation of the land was not practical with prison labour. Therefore, in 1823, military rule in Newcastle ended. The number of prisoners was reduced to 100 (most of these were employed on the building of the breakwater), and the remaining 900 were sent to Port Macquarie.
Freed for the first time from the infamous influence of the penal law, the town began to acquire the aspect of a typical Australian pioneer settlement, and a steady flow of free settlers poured into the hinterland. Between 1826 and 1836 the convict-built Great North Road established the overland link with Sydney.
Coal mining began in earnest in the 1830s, with collieries working close to the city itself and others within a ten-mile radius. Most of Newcastle's principal coal mines (Stockton, Tighes Hill, Carrington, the Australian Agricultural Company, the Newcastle Coal Mining company's big collieries at Merewether (includes the Glebe), Wallsend, and the Waratah collieries), had all closed by the early 1960s, being steadily replaced over the previous four decades by the larger coal mining activities further inland at places such as Kurri Kurri and Cessnock.
On 10th December 1831 the Australian Agricultural Company officially opened Australia's first railway. On 10th December 2006 a plaque was unveiled on the southern shore of Newcastle Harbour celebrating this event. About 1850 a major copper smelting works was established at Burwood, near Merewether (now a suburb), an engraving of which appeared in the Illustrated London News on 11 February 1854. The English and Australian Copper Company built another substantial works at Broadmeadow circa 1890, and in that decade a zinc smelter was built inland, by Cockle Creek.
What was said to be the largest factory of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere was constructed in 1885, on a 22 acre site between the suburbs of Tighes Hill and Port Waratah, by Mr Charles Upfold (1834-1919), from London, for his Sydney Soap and Candle Company, to replace a smaller factory in Wickham. Their soap products won 17 medals at International Exhibitions, and at the Sydney International Exhibition they won a bronze medal "against all-comers from every part of the world", the only first prize awarded for soap and candles. Following World War I the company was sold to Messrs Lever & Kitchen (today Lever Bros.), and the factory closed in the mid-1930s.
After a major steel strike in the Sydney basin, the State Government of NSW encouraged BHP to build a vast modern steel producing industry with American expertise. The land put aside was prime real estate, on the southern edge of the harbour. At one stage the idea of a Botanical Garden was considered because of the waterfront location and proximity to the wealthy suburb of Mayfield. In 1915 the BHP steelworks opened, beginning a period of some 80 years dominated by the steel works and heavy industry. As Mayfield and the suburbs surrounding the steelworks declined in popularity because of pollution, the steelworks thrived, becoming the region's largest employer. In 1999, the steelworks closed. Many workers, having spent their entire working lives there saw Australia's largest industrial shutdown complete as the last blast furnace went out. As the former workforce began to deal with the economic and emotional impact, Newcastle began to experience a new image as less of an industrial, smoke stack city.
On 28th December 1989, Newcastle experienced an earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale which killed 13 people, injured 162 and destroyed or severely damaged a number of prominent buildings which had to be subsequently demolished. These included the large George Hotel in Scott Street (city), the Century Theatre at Broadmeadow, the Hunter Theatre (formerly 'The Star') at Merewether, and the majority of The Junction school, also at Merewether. Part of the Newcastle Workers' Club, a popular venue, was also damaged but later restored. The following economic recession of the early 1990s meant that the city took several years to recover.
During the Second World War, Newcastle was a crucial industrial centre for the Allied war effort. Subsequently, it was an obvious Japanese target during the Second World War, particularly during 1942 when Australia faced a very real threat of enemy invasion. In the February of 1942, the Northern Territory capital of Darwin was the site of the first enemy air raids on the Australian mainland. Over 240 people were killed in one attack alone, which struck at both military and civilian targets. On the 31st May, 1942 three midget submarines crept into Sydney Harbour and killed 21 sleeping officers on an accommodation vessel at Garden Island, east of the Harbour Bridge. By this time, there was a great fear among the Australian people of a full scale Japanese invasion and cities and towns along the eastern seaboard were forced into strict wartime regulations. Newcastle was one of the most prepared cities in the country and in the early hours of 8th June 1942 when the first enemy bombs began landing around the city centre and suburbs, the people of Newcastle acted with brave composure. The city was hit with an unknown number of Japanese shells, fired from a mother-sub off the Australian coast. Given the distance between the submarine and the city, there was little precision in the attack which was aimed and doing nothing more than injecting fear in the civilian population. Luckily, there were no casualties in the attack and minimal damage.
The Port of Newcastle remains the economic and trade centre for the resource rich Hunter Valley and for much of the north and northwest of New South Wales. Newcastle is the world's busiest coal export port and Australia's oldest and second largest tonnage throughput port, with over 3,000 shipping movements handling cargo in excess of 90 million tonnes per annum, of which coal exports represent more than 90%. The volume of coal exported, and attempts to increase coal exports, are opposed by a number of small local environmentalist groups. Newcastle has a small ship building industry, which has declined since the 1970s due to failure to win government contract tenders.
With the closure of the steel works in 2000 many see the era of heavy industry as past. Many of the manufacturing industries have located themselves away from the city centre, focusing on cheap land and access to road transport routes and lack the concentrated social impact of BHP on the city's life. In spite of the steel works closure, the city's population continues to grow. The old city centre has seen some new apartments and hotels built in recent years.


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