Another photo of Newcastle Nobby's Head in the autumn. We have the current weather conditions on the sidebar - warm and sunny. It felt hotter than 24 degrees out on the breakwater this morning. In essence, this blog started as a "place blog" almost four years ago. The motive was to encourage people to look at Newcastle as a place worthy of a visit as opposed to an industrial city. ("Dirty, smokey place" to quote Fanny Thornton, N&S). For visitors to this blog, I should explain that Newcastle has always been the sort of place that is looked down upon by Sydney siders most of whom bypass it when driving to points further north. It was best known for its coal loader, once a manufacturing site for steel (until they shut down BHP) and port. Unions were strong and it is a safe Labor seat politically. We do however also have beaches, vineyards and national parks nearby so we are not totally hemmed in by industry....although industry was, and still is part of Newcastle life. I still remember arriving here as a raw young physiotherapist applying ultrasound to the back of a miner. The aquasonic gel (light blue) used with the ultrasound head became black from the coal dust that had become impregnated into the pores of his skin. The old miner used to call me a "silvertail" because I had come from a leafy part of Sydney with no real experience of the true working class ethos.
How am I going to link this in to may last post? Well, Newcastle has been described as a manufacturing city and represents "200 years of working class heritage". Read more here. I've just been enjoying the BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South. I have linked to the BBC website for this drama and also here to the page at the RAonline website which is extremely good. I can't help finding a few albeit vague similarities to Margaret Hale in terms of my own journey of moving from a middle class leafy Sydney suburb to working class smoggy, (in those days), Newcastle. I remember washing the coal dust off the window sills every couple of days when I first arrived. Our roof space had 5 cm of accumulated coal dust in it. You learnt to hide the fact that you came from Sydney's northern suburbs - the divide in wealth between the workers and the business owners was significant. After many years of living here however, the place grows on you and I have certainly found myself defending Newcastle to Sydney people on more than several occasions. I still love to visit Sydney but I don't think I could ever go back to live there. Amazing how watching one BBC drama can make you reflect on your own story. If it hadn't been for visiting the RichardArmitageOnline website I don't think I would ever have seen the production. (NB: That's the actor, not the US politician).
Thanks also to Angela who visited this blog and left a comment about the messages from RA the actor, I mentioned in the last post. I'd love to think he does write those messages to his fans - certainly that earlier posting to the BBC board must have shocked the posters albeit a welcome "shock"...it's not something I would expect to happen however. I'm very happy to be corrected on this and welcome more discussion but how do they (RAOnline and AA) know they are really from him??? Is there a code perhaps?