Newcastle City Guide

9 Aboriginal people lived a very rich and vibrant existence in and around Muloobinba (Newcastle) and the Coquon (Hunter River). Food was abundant in marine life and bush tucker. Ceremonies and feasting were generally times for sharing of resources and trading of implements with inland clans. Shell middens at Meekarlba (Honeysuckle) and a tool making site at Pillapay Kullaitaran (Glenrock Lagoon) are remnants of those communal gatherings. Captain James Cook noted a distinctive islet (now known as Nobbys Head) on his expedition along the east coast in May 1770. In 1791, William and Mary Bryant, their two infant children and six escaped convicts ran their six-oared cutter into ‘a small creek’ somewhere close to the present city. The Hunter River was also visited in 1796 by a party of fishermen, who brought samples of coal back to Sydney. In September 1797, Lieutenant John Shortland was sent north from Port Jackson to search for a number of convicts who had escaped. Lieutenant Shortland made for Port Stephens, where he thought the fugitives would take shelter, but after unsuccessfully searching the bays and inlets, he sailed for home. While returning he entered what he later described as “a very fine coal river” which he named after Governor Hunter. Lieutenant Shortland returned to Sydney Cove with a sketch of the harbour and reports of the abundant coal in the area. Over the next two years several ships sailed to the Hunter for coal and by 1799 sufficient quantities had been brought back to make up a shipment for export. This shipment went to Bengal. It is acknowledged by historians as the first ever export of a commodity from modern Australia. The fledgling Sydney colony drew on the area’s coal and timber resources before using it as a satellite penal settlement for the very worst offenders. At Limeburners Bay on the Stockton peninsula, bone-weary convicts were set to work making lime. When military rule ended in 1823, a pioneer town blossomed. Throughout the 1900s, Newcastle’s fortunes were tied to the steelworks and coal industry. A deadly earthquake struck in 1989, and the steelworks’ closure ten years later also rocked the city to its foundations. However, Newcastle’s port remains the world’s biggest coal export terminal. Today, even as Newcastle embraces its indigenous, colonial, maritime and industrial past, it is busy looking to the future as a regional capital of creativity and cool.