This week on Great Australian Walks Gina Chick strides down Bathers Way in Newcastle on a stunning coastal walk that reflects how this harbour city – home to coal and steel, shipwrecks and Silverchair – has reinvented itself.
Established in 1801, Newcastle – or ‘Newy’ as the locals refer to it – is Australia’s second-oldest city, having long played bridesmaid to Sydney.
Walking barefoot, of course, Gina starts along the foreshore where giant tankers inch out of the harbour delivering tonnes of coal to markets overseas.
She then walks along Newy’s main artery, Hunter Street, discovering a city that was once reliant on steel to stoke the coal furnaces but learns that demand for steel plummeted. In 1999 BHP closed, leaving thousands of locals out of work.
Now, however, it is bustling with artists thanks to a project known as Renew Newcastle. Among its most famous artists are the rock band Silverchair, who catapulted Newcastle onto the global map after they were discovered by the SBS program ‘Nomad’ in 1994.
Then Gina wanders along Nobbys Beach, where she meets Professor John Maynard, a Worimi man who shows her paintings from the 1800s depicting his people on the beach enjoying a bounty of seafood.
Along Bather’s Way, she passes the Newcastle Ocean Baths and then the Bogey Hole, the oldest ocean pool in NSW. Here she meets Chris Balalovski, the honorary consul of Macedonia, who reveals how this pool is used for a cultural ritual called the Epiphany Ceremony.
Then she makes her way to the iconic Merewether Ocean Baths, where she meets three- time Paralympic champion Kurt Fearnley AO.
7:30pm Thursday on SBS.
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