The Hunter Region's reinvented post-industrial beach city — where Newcastle sits at the mouth of the Hunter River 170 km north of Sydney, and its transformation from Australia's steel city (the BHP Newcastle steelworks, the largest steel plant in the Southern Hemisphere during its peak, closed in 1999 after 84 years of operation) into one of Australia's most successful post-industrial regeneration stories is visible everywhere: the heritage-listed Newcastle railway station (1878 — a Victorian-era sandstone building that was the terminus of the Sydney to Newcastle rail line) was closed and its track corridor converted into a light rail and cycling/walking path (the Newcastle Inner City Bypass greenway) transforming what had been an urban railway barrier into a 3 km linear park connecting the CBD to the beach, the Bogey Hole (a 19th-century sea pool hewn from the sandstone rock platform at the base of King Edward Park — the oldest man-made ocean pool in Australia, commissioned by convict labour for the use of the commandant of the convict establishment in 1819) is 10 minutes' walk from the CBD, and the Newcastle Cathedral (1892, still incomplete but designated as one of the finest examples of Gothic Revival architecture in Australia) overlooks the harbour from the Boscabel estate
Newcastle (360,000 city; 490,000 greater area) is the second-largest city in New South Wales and the seventh-largest in Australia — a former steel and coal city at the mouth of the Hunter River that has reinvented itself as a beach, arts, and technology hub. Newcastle exports more coal by volume than any other port in Australia (the Hunter Valley coalfields are the largest in Australia) while simultaneously building a reputation as one of Australia's most livable regional cities.
The Awabakal and Worimi peoples inhabited the Hunter River mouth and surrounding coast for thousands of years. Newcastle was established in 1804 as a penal settlement — specifically to house the most incorrigible convicts from Sydney, partly because its isolation by sea made escape difficult. The 1989 Newcastle earthquake (5.6 Mw — the deadliest natural disaster in Australian history, killing 13 people) destroyed large sections of the CBD and accelerated the decline of the steel industry. The closure of the BHP steelworks in 1999 removed 2,500 direct jobs and 8,500 indirect jobs overnight — t…