I'm A Local
by jesmond
Hi. All u travellers and ur tips are so very wrong!
to foreigners, newcastle can be summed up as: the most beautiful city in the world.
All those European cities? boring! Asian, American? Very boring!!!
Newcastle was originally a penal colony for convicts, now it is a booming boom-town (not really). In the city there are alot of teenage losers, who hang around and want to mug you (joke). Clubs and clubs in newcastle are all CRAP AS, believe me, except Illusion, which is in Hunter ST,city.
The beaches are nice, but too many ugh- people there, like fat guys in speedos and women with big thighs. Not so good. Restaurants are also very poor, very bad. Best to eat sticks and leaves and urine.
Ok, well, as i said, i'm a local, I WAS BORN HERE, and i know EVERYTHING about this bum town. So everyone else is WRONG WRONG WRONG. i really hate travellers. they dont know anything!!!! When i turned 18 and could leave this horrible, horrible place. The people are horrid.
Tall ships
by iandsmith
From time to time, sailing ships visit Newcastle. I have been fortunate to be aboard three of them. This particular one was Russian. Some time after the federation broke up. With most of the Russian economy then kaput, this ship sails into Newcastle harbour.
The town is excited and many people visit (for a fee) and the option to sail to Brisbane with them is also on offer (for a bigger fee).
Ships provodores are contacted and on board comes cans of Fanta and Coke and quite a few other provisions. This all looks good until a few hours before they sail when suddenly, all the goods are unloaded again due to lack of payment. Such is the life of the Russian sailor, landing in a world where the government no longer provides everything. I found it all a bit sad really.
This sailor is holding a couple of freebies that I gave them. I was, at that time, employed by a certain chemical company and saw a great photo opportunity here for virtually nothing.
Unfortunately, it wasn't only the Russians that were in trouble. Just a few weeks later the 90 year old company I worked for was bought out by an American company and totally dismantled (read all of us sacked) within 6 months.
See, behind every picture there IS a story!
Carrington - a suburb in transit
by iandsmith
Carrington is an industrial suburb but the arts and money are making slow inroads. When the BHP shut the steelworks down it was no longer a polluted suburb and some fresh residential development took place. Other little pieces of sculpture and art were added. Despite all that it is still a working class suburb, its proximity to the wharf will always leave that mark on it.
The most significant and run-down edifice in all Carrington is the old pump station. Heritage-listed, it would cost too much to restore it and you can't pull it down. Stalemate. And so it rots, this 1877 example of historical architecture. It used to house the pumps that gave hydraulic pressure to the cranes that unloaded the old coal wagons; picking them up bodily off the bogies and pulling a pin that released the bottom and all the coal crashed into the hull of the ship. A small part at the back was restored by apprentices but the potentially stand-out facade is sadly in need of a clean and refurbish. The second pics shows you a small piece of modern art out the front of the old pump house whilst the third reflects the fact that Newcastle is still a very busy port; the fourth is yet another little artist binge that sits in the main street.
Storm chasing
by iandsmith
A lot of the storms at Newcastle come in from the south. An ideal place to watch them arrive is Bar Beach carpark which, rather obviously, is what we are doing here!
This is also quite near a spot where hang gliders take off when the wind is right. One such person once caught the updraft and soared about 40kms inland!
There's another unusual shot in the others as well of some mammatus clouds, so named because of their shape. It's fairly unusual to see them and I've only ever managed to get two shots, once at Coffs Harbour and this one at Bar Beach.
Netball
by iandsmith
Netball is big in Newcastle. Once upon a time we had our own team in the National League but we got controversially axed. Newcastle not happy, it has happened so many times in so many sports it's almost embarrassing.
Still, that hasn't stopped netball being extremely popular in Newcastle and, just behind the No. 1 Sportsground in Union Street are a bank of netball courts, 20 plus if my memory serves me correctly. Heck, I only live 100 metres away, you'd think I could do better than that!
Especially as I walk past them at least three times a week.
Anyhow, I digress; there's also a soccer ground there which regularly gets flooded when it buckets down and, slack me, I don't have a picture of netball being played but I do have a picture of the wet ground after a humungous storm. If you want to play then just turn up any weekend in winter and there's thousands of people coming and going (and taking up the car parking spot out in front of our place). It's all very colourful and very healthy and all you need is your uniform, a pair of impact resistant sandshoes and a team.
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Great Northern Hotel - history restored
The bridge
Australian natives Hunter Botanic gardens
Typical of the new buildings
