1 July 2012 - Belmont Bayview Park, Lake Macquarie, NSW

We are still here and will be for a further two nights at least, having extended our booking this morning in full confidence that there is enough to fill the extra days and maybe even more. The day started less impressive than yesterday, the sky overcast and the breeze adding to the cool temperatures.

A fisherman risking his life on Newcastle's Pacific coast

The sky had not fallen on Whyalla and wiped it off the face of South Australia as the opposition had predicted if the Carbon Tax Bill was passed and enacted on this very day; Australians are not happy with their lying prime minister.

We had expected today to appear just as yesterday and so set off toward Newcastle once more and detoured toward the cliffs overlooking several surf beaches for which Newcastle is well known. Today there were hundreds of wet-suited bodies beyond the waves and the occasional successful board rider, but we were more interested in the Bogey Hole.  We drove through the lovely suburbs of Bar Beach and The Hill, past attractive terrace houses, and parked in King Edward Park before walking down the cliff pathway to this tourist attraction, an ocean bath hewn from the rock by convicts in about 1820. Today it is barricaded with an orange plastic fence and looks like it hasn’t been used since 1850. The waves were breaking over the edge of the pool and we could not possibly imagine how anyone would want cool off there, even in the heat of the summer. Close by there were fishermen standing precariously on the rock ledges above the wild surf, casting their rods hopefully into the sea. Further to the north on a rocky plateau beyond the closer surf beach we could see a more modern version of an ocean bath.

Our next port of call was the new Newcastle Museum which is not where our Tomtom directed us, but down nearer the foreshore close to the Information Centre. The volunteer at the Centre directed us to the free Sunday parking in Hunter Street. He started to mutter about the cost of parking in Newcastle, a matter which we could have contributed to, but bit his tongue. We nodded sagely and indicated that we supported his view entirely however would also keep mum on the subject for now.

The museum is now located in three of the heritage-listed Honeysuckle Railway Workshops, which played such an important role of the city. Perhaps the curator was he or she who set Wellington’s Te Papa Museum up? We first visited the museum in New Zealand’s capital city about ten years ago, maybe earlier and were not at all impressed. It is as if the old museum was crammed with memorabilia, too much to work with and so the curator flung his hands in the air, plucked a few items from the pile and set the resulting exhibitions up in the most minimalistic way possible.

The first of the three buildings is occupied by A Newcastle Story, a concept that initially excited me. However the displays are very minimal and set in huge walls with inadequate explanation. This particular exhibition is more suited to locals who know the city geographically and can recognise each location and enjoy the brief resume of the local history of that particular spot. Somehow it did not meet my expectations or needs, but then I am only one of many. Chris was not impressed either.

Another building houses a wonderful exhibition titled Supernova and Mininova, a collection of interactive exhibits to challenge and instruct in science, maths and engineering; very modern, very popular with families and an absolute treasure for young minds. Unfortunately many of the exhibits were faulty and obviously resources are not such to cater for an in-house fixit womble. For me personally, a physics dunce, most of the educational aspect went straight over my head.

The third building is dedicated to celebrating Newcastle’s two major industries, coal mining and BHP steel, an exhibition titled Fire and Earth. There is a light and sound show on the hour where a hologram or the like spoke to us about life in the steelworks. BHP Steel started production in 1915 and operated right through to 1999, at its peak through the 1960s. This exhibition was very good but still left gaps in the story. Probably 8/10.

It was lunchtime when we emerged. We decided to drive on to Ash Island to the Koorangang Wetlands. The promotional city map we had was so out of scale (as it explained in the very small print) that it was nearly afternoon tea time by the time we crossed the south arm of the Hunter River on to the island and parked at the entrance. Well, perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, however Chris did remark that he would not have wanted to come here today had he realised the distance from the centre of Newcastle.

After lunch we set off on the boardwalk across the mangrove swamps. Ash Island covers 1,590 hectares when it is not under water. In pre-European days, Aboriginals hunted and gathered food on and around the twenty or so islands and mudflats of the Hunter River estuary. The natural tidal flow, both marine and flood, ensured the abundance of wildlife and fauna. Within twenty years of European settlement timber had been removed from the estuary. In the 1860s Ash Island was subdivided, cleared and drained, then settled by fifty five families operating seventeen dairies. The island flooded regularly however the inhabitants were obviously stauncher than my great great grandmother Jane who was not prepared to put up with the floods further upstream at Maitland. It took until the great floods of 1955 when the government took the land back and leased it for grazing. Finally in 1993, the Kooragang Wetland Rehabilitation Project was launched and Ash Island, the Tomago Wetlands covering 800 hectares and 10 hectares of the Stockton Sandspit were taken in hand. Today the area is used for recreation, education, tourism and research.

We drove to the northern edge of the island and walked along the boundary of the eighty eight hectares put aside for cattle grazing. By the time we returned to the cruiser, others had decided that the Kooragang Wetlands was a good Sunday destination as we had. Up until then we had seemed the only ones on the island. I imagine it is quite popular in the summer time, however today remained dull and swamps just don’t seem to do it for most people.

The road back to Belmont just happened to run close to Blackbutt Reserve and I had read the name of this place in conjunction with koalas. Now you know me; I have a thing about koalas even if I have never actually touched one. And so we detoured and parked in the more elevated section of this one hundred and eighty seven hectare reserve. The bush all about was quite lovely, an oasis in the middle of the suburbs of New Lambton, Kotara and Adamstown Heights. A dozen or so kookaburras watched our progress as we set off on down the hill following the signs “wildlife”. At the bottom of the hill, better accessed from the lower road, we found many picnicking and enjoying the “zoo” free to the public.

There is a small area dedicated to exhibits all housed in relatively new enclosures. Here we saw a couple of koalas, a couple of wombats, a couple of spotted quolls, Brush-tailed Rock wallabies, a very large and beautiful diamond python, a lace monitor lying as flat as it could in its cave, drab wet frogs, lorikeets, parrots, finches, ducks, herons and much more. While nothing beats wildlife in the wilderness, this was very good and is an excellent freebie attraction to the traveller with a budget.

By now the sky had brightened but the later afternoon air was already cooling. We headed home via Charlestown in search of the official magazine to accompany the 2012 Tour de France which started last night; three weeks of excitement ahead and very late nights for my husband. Just as well his health is improving each day.