Now Voyager: Summery Newcastle on the Ground Floor

Early train from Sydney lands me in the city of my Alma Mater, Newcastle University.

I have come to see the changes as it is about sixteen years since I've been away.

I decide to alight at the Civic station, one before the final stop, so I can stroll the last kilometres to see if there are changes and I immediately see the foreshore has been totally resumed, renewed and a nice boardwalk all along the harbour is very nice and relaxing. Fishermen are there in the warm sun and I immediately recognise the superior climate that we had here in this Jewel of the North.

Today is superb, with not a breath of wind but a mild 20 degree temperature enticing the most timid outside. At the Civic is now the Newcastle Museum so I enter for a quick browse. It is, of course, the origins of the Steel City in this Museum, memories of the grimy soot filled city I first arrived in post school in 1962. But they were two memorable and great years for me, if only to give me a taste for the wider world which I soon embraced after quitting this city in 1963 to go to Sydney. But it has certainly changed since then, and also my second visitation in the late nineties when I resumed my studies at the new university showed me that. But it has gone ahead even since then, and I am suitably impressed, at least from the exterior. The interior, its Soul, waits to be discovered.

The cafe at the museum has nice sandwiches so I buy one to take away and eat on the harbour foreshore looking at the ferries and tugboats lazily cruising up and down this glistening quiet waterway, the entrance to the Hunter River where once the capital was meant to be at Morpeth and Maitland, a little higher upstream.

Crossing the railway line, which I have heard is soon to be demolished and replaced with Light Rail from Broadmeadow to the city, I reach Hunter Street, the lone main road of this handsome city. I see that the flagship department store of David Jones has given up the ghost and it now houses some nondescript store which looks nameless. That is a disappointing sign, but I wonder it it has relocated to the suburban shopping malls where everyone shops these days - I hope so. Newcastle city remains a holiday spot, being right on several beautiful beaches and now not relying on the BHP steelworks to pollute their skies it depends much more on a tourist trade as it is the gateway to the vineyards of the Hunter Valley as well.

There are many fine things to note about this town, but it remains to be seen if it has really raised itself above the once country-town mentality it once had, and assumed its rightful position as a worthy second city to Sydney. It certainly deserves that mantle as it has everything going for it.

So my first impressions are good and my coffee and croissant at this very busy and trendy 'Ground Flooor' cafe on Hunter and Newcomen Streets are proof of its progress. I want to see the Newcastle beach before I leave on the 2.15 train to Woy Woy, there to meet up with Malcolm and Dean. A busy and thought-provoking morning I have already had.

Jogging here too...