Day 62: 20231124 Friday November 24, 2023- Newcastle Riverfront and Merewether
The weather forecast rain but although the sky was heavy with clouds and the air thick with humidity, we managed to miss any significant precipitation. Today, we got together with two of our Coral Princess Trivia team, John and Linda, who live in a nice condo in Newcastle. It’s in the heart of the riverfront district upstream from the part of the waterfront that we had walked on our first day in Newcastle. After coffee and tea, we walked along the riverfront which was pretty much directly across from massive grain elevators, and down to the Newcastle Museum, which is housed in historic rail sheds along the waterfront.
The Newcastle Museum has free general admission and includes galleries with exhibits highlighting Newcastle’s history, Industrial history including its heavy steel industry, and a children’s science museum. There is also an optional fee supported gallery with traveling exhibits which currently houses an exhibit on Australia and Space exploration.
Newcastle grew around the coal and heavy steel industries, and played an essential role in steel production that helped Allied forces ultimately win the World Wars I and II. These industries required both skilled and unskilled labor which drove several waves of immigration into Australia. In the years following the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Australia’s steel industry suffered a similar fate to the US’s steel industry, largely shuttering all their blast furnaces and rolling mills. The exhibit on the area’s steel industry history was reminiscent of a museum we had visited in Allentown Pennsylvania, in the heart of the US’s steel industry. The area managed to survive the economic impact of shuttering of their steel industry through diversification of their industrial footprint and leveraging their deep water port. Newcastle has even been a cruise ship port of call. John and Linda have seen Princess Cruise ships including the Coral and Grand Princess tied up at the industrials piers across the river from the waterfront we walked on.
It seems disasters in Australia tend to gravitate to holidays because highly destructive Cyclone Tracey plowed through Darwin on Christmas Day in 1974. Newcastle had a destructive earthquake in 1989 ironically on Australia Day.
The museum was right sized for a day walking excursion- not too big, not too small, but just right. By the time we had finished the museum we were ready for lunch. Since getting off the cruise ship, we have felt this strange sensation of hunger from time to time. So we had lunch at a very pleasant waterfront restaurant called the Boat Shed, which was just a stone’s throw from John and Linda’s condo.
After we said our farewells to John and Linda, we drove across town to Merewether beach. Ben had done some research on things to do in rainy weather and searched for museums and aquariums. Well, the “Merewether Aquarium” isn’t really an aquarium. It’s an urban art mural filling a pedestrian underpass. Still, it is a worthy stop, not unlike the troll that lives under the Fremont Bridge in Seattle.
After a quick trip through the “aquarium”, we headed down to Merewether beach where they have a huge saltwater swimming complex called the Merewether Ocean Baths. Beyond the swimming pool is a rocky stretch of beach with tide pools. This is the first place in Australia we have had the opportunity to walk on a rocky shoreline. There are interesting black and white snails in these tide pools. Some of the seaweed looks like Jamaican dreadlocks.
We returned to the Charlestown Square food court for dinner and were surprised to see that despite it being Black Friday, many of the stores in the mall were closed at 7pm. Target, JB HiFi and a number of other shops were still hoping to nab some Black Friday shoppers, but the mall was a lot less crowded than when we visited earlier in the week. We got Xiao Long Bao and BBQ Pork steamed buns, but the Pan fried pork dumplings and most of the other dumplings were sold out. We did get some delicious stir fried green beans though, to offset all the chips (French fries) we have been having recently.
Tomorrow we’ll have to head back into Sydney to check into the Hyatt Regency and then return our rental car. Hopefully the rain will not be too bad during our drive.
