Author: Carol Duncan

BEACHES MARITIME HISTORY PEOPLE PORT STORMS
8 June 2021

The ‘Pasha Bulker’ Storm – June 2007

The 2007 Newcastle storms and floods caused over $1.6 billion in damage, thousands of homes were damaged and around 5000 cars were destroyed. Tragically, 10 people across the wider region lost their lives.
Watch the ABC Newcastle film here.

BUILDINGS MARITIME HISTORY PODCAST PORT SHIPWRECKS
29 May 2021

Leading Light or Beacon Towers

Newcastle has its very own castle turret on top of The Hill in the form of the Leading Light Tower or Beacon Tower. It was one of two built to assist captains in bringing their ships safely into the port. The coast around Newcastle is littered with hundreds of shipwrecks and the pair of towers built in 1865/1866 helped to increase the safety of vessels entering the Hunter River.

Uncategorized
18 May 2021

Vera Deacon OAM | 1926 – 2021

In 2020, Vera was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to community history and to conservation, and was additionally made a Freeman of the City of Newcastle. In typical Vera fashion, she insisted, “I can think of 100 other people who should have been ahead of me!”

ABORIGINAL ART PEOPLE
11 May 2021

Lycett & Wallis – The Convict & The Commandant

“I think the importance of artwork like Lycett’s in regards to a city like Newcastle is that you don’t have to go to Arnhem Land or the Kimberley to be in touch with Indigenous culture and important cultural sites. There are so many of these really significant sites right within this city.” Professor John Maynard At the beginning of the 19th Century in one of […]

ABORIGINAL ART PODCAST
11 May 2021

The Wallis Album

In 2012, a previously unknown album of drawings from 1818, including landscapes and portraits of Aboriginal people from the Newcastle region, returned to Newcastle for a brief exhibition by the State Library of NSW. The ‘Wallis Album’ was compiled by Captain James Wallis, the Commandant of Newcastle from 1816 to 1818, in collaboration with one of the best know early colonial artists, the convicted forger Joseph Lycett.

SCHOOLS
1 May 2021

Newcastle East Public School

Newcastle East Public School is the oldest continually operating school in Austalia having started in 1816. The school’s first master was a convict on a conditional pardon, Henry Wrensford, and was originally located in a slab hut at the bottom of the hill where Bolton Street is now.

MARITIME HISTORY WW2
29 April 2021

A Russian Visit

Newcastle may once have been concerned that the Russians were coming … but this news article from 1888 details the visit of HIRMS Rynda – a Russian warship that came in to the port of Newcastle to take on coal. This article from The Newcastle Morning Herald & Miner’s Advocate (Extract – 1888). More than usual excitement was manifested in Newcastle yesterday afternoon, about 4.30 […]