As a major global port with an extraordinary maritime history, one might suppose that Newcastle would have a maritime museum as a matter of course. Some years ago you would have been right, but not any more. Newcastle Maritime Museum once occupied one of the old Lee Wharf sheds on Newcastle’s harbour-front, restored from dereliction with $2.4 million raised by the museum’s dedicated volunteer committee. But in 2018 the museum was forced to leave this building – which had apparently been earmarked from the start of the city’s Honeysuckle urban renewal project for community use – and its collections now lie unseen and neglected in a shed on Newcastle Showground (another threatened public facility, incidentally). Meanwhile the Lee Wharf building has lain vacant in the intervening years, with its next use apparently to be an alcohol-related commercial venture.
There are hopes in some quarters that recent changes at Newcastle City Council might offer the prospect of the museum being reinstated, but this would require some accommodation on both sides of what had become a seemingly poisonous relationship between the council and the museum committee.
Newcastle traces its maritime history back to colonial days when the Coal River was a place to send political prisoners and incorrigible villains. In those days, for Europeans, the place was only accessible by sea. Newcastle is credited with shipping Australia’s first export cargo. It was a tremendously important coal port in the dying days of sail. It was a ship-building and repair centre of national importance and to this day it is considered one of the most significant coal export ports in the world.
Newcastle has seen scores of shipwrecks and heroic rescues. It is one of a handful of Australian places to have come under enemy attack from the sea during World War 2. It was known to blue water sailors across the globe who knew the meaning of the expression, “Now you’re safe ’round Nobbys!”. [The harbour was notoriously tricky to enter in the wrong conditions and getting your vessel safely around the port’s famous headland meant you could usually breathe a sigh of relief.] Newcastle was a paradise for crimps and shanghai artists. Its sailor pubs were known around the world. It was and is, in short, a harbour city with a million salty tales to tell.
So why no maritime museum? Despite incredible efforts by generations of devoted volunteers who strove to assemble and preserve precious collections and artefacts, and despite millions of dollars in hard-won funds being raised and spent, in my opinion the museum foundered on the rocks of government neglect, petty rivalries and short-sighted commercial and bureaucratic nit-picking.
I recently spoke to Jeanne Walls, who was intimately involved with the museum for many years. A high-energy sales and marketing professional, she – like many other Hunter people – feels gutted by the fate of the museum. Ms Walls told me her association with the museum began in 1987 when much of the collection that forms its core was shifted from the old Mechanics’ Institute building in Lambton to Fort Scratchley. “I was brought on board to help organise the Maritime Festival for Captain Ken Hopper, the Newcastle Harbour Master,” she said. Soon, as her enthusiasm for the museum and its tourism potential for Newcastle grew, Ms Walls found herself president of the committee.
Pigeon-manure-infested dump
She described how, when Wharf Road’s name was being changed to Honeysuckle Drive, she was invited to pick up the old road sign for the Maritime Museum collection, since nobody else wanted it. “I went down to get it and I saw George Keegan, who was the Independent Member for Newcastle. He pointed at the Wharf Road building and told me it was reserved for community use and that, if we could raise the money we could have it. Well, we got to work and got money from all the over the place. We got corporate donations and government grants and we raised as much money as we could. In the end we raised $2.4 million, which we spent turning that building from a pigeon-manure-infested dump into a really nice museum space,” she said.
Ms Walls said the museum committee paid for the installation of a mezzanine floor and an elevator. But now, she said, she had to move aside from the committee to concentrate on pressing family issues. “It was also around this time that our president Peter Morris – the former Labor MP and federal minister – had a heart attack,” she said. “The new committee – under Ian Jones and Bill Quirk – was very good and they had good ideas, but they struggled financially.” She said the former Newcastle City Council general manager, Janet Dore, had discussed a vision of a museum and cultural precinct encompassing the regional and maritime museums but this didn’t really come to pass. “The Maritime Museum was in the position of having to charge entry, there was very little parking in the area and we were unable to get a wharf built outside the museum at the time we wanted it,” she said.
The museum paid its rent – about $35,000 a year, she said – to the Honeysuckle Development Corporation (now the Hunter & Central Coast Development Corporation) – but the time came when the landlord and tenant failed to see eye-to-eye. “Honeysuckle said there was rent owing and they wanted access to the area to repair piers. Under the circumstances the committee didn’t feel safe signing up to another long lease,” she said. “Ironically, Honeysuckle paid more to move the museum out than the amount of rent that was owing. And since the museum shifted out they have built the wharf that the museum would have loved to have.” Ms Walls insisted that media reports of the alleged total debts owed by the museum were overblown. “The narrative that the museum was financially unsustainable is simply not true,” she said. “We managed to fund-raise each year through the dedication of volunteers who poured thousands of hours into restoring historic vessels and organising events like the Newcastle Maritime Festival, with crowds of up to 60,000, which was free for the community. We could have easily raised the $60,000 that was owed. The real reason for the Maritime Museum’s closure was not a massive debt, but rather a combination of external pressure and a lack of institutional support from both the HCCDC and NCC,” she asserted.
A spokesperson for City of Newcastle provided me with a written statement which says: “The Newcastle Maritime Centre, operated by the Newcastle Maritime Museum Society (NMMS), voluntarily closed in May 2018 following admissions by its former Committee it had been trading while insolvent for several years”.
Another former museum society president, businessman Ian Jones, agreed with Ms Walls’s assessment and said the assertion that the museum traded while “insolvent” was an unfair description. Mr Jones said he had been involved with the museum since about 2013. “I took on the role of president after Peter Morris got sick,” he said. “I still feel very strongly that our departure from the site seemed to have been contrived. The original story we were told was that we needed to move out so that piers could be stabilised. Then we had our final year of funding from Newcastle City Council withheld, allegedly on the basis that we were not financially viable.” Mr Jones didn’t disagree that the museum wasn’t viable in the sense of admission income covering running costs, but he said the deficit was very manageable. “We were down about $50,000, which was approximately the amount the council had withheld,” he said. “The story was put about that we owed $300,000, but a great deal of that was a paper debt to our manager, Frank Elgar, who actually passed away shortly after the museum was forced to close. It wasn’t anything we were required to urgently deal with. It was more a recognition of the value of all the unpaid work Frank had done – much like many other people who volunteered for us.”
“No doubt the museum was not a money-making business,” he said. He said it should have been combined at the outset with Newcastle Regional Museum, along with appropriate additional funding. “How can a major maritime centre like Newcastle have a museum that doesn’t include a significant maritime component?”
Building empty ever since
Mr Jones said it hurt him to see that the building his group had paid so much money to restore had sat idle for five years. “They paid more than we owed to move us out and the building has been empty since,” he said. “Meanwhile our fantastic collections are sitting unseen in storage. Newcastle deserves better.”
Ms Walls paid tribute to current committee president, former Newcastle City Councillor Bob Cook, whom she said had saved the Maritime Museum collection – now under the control of Newcastle City Council – in the face of “massive pressure” to disperse it.
“The “A” Shed, restored with so much community effort, should be returned to its intended purpose as a hub for maritime heritage,” she said. “The Maritime Museum deserves to be reinstated as a central part of Newcastle’s cultural landscape. Newcastle is one of the world’s major maritime cities, with a proud seafaring tradition, and it deserves a Maritime Museum that reflects that legacy. It’s a complete travesty to see that collection out of reach of the public and the committee, stuck away in a shed with no sign it will ever come out again. We are so much worse off now than we were in 1987,” she said.
The chairman of Newcastle Agricultural Horticultural and Industrial Association, Newcastle solicitor Peter Evans, said he was incredibly disappointed by the situation. “I was approached by the council to provide storage at the Showground for the museum collection,” he said. “I had hoped we would negotiate a deal where the Show Association would get some rental income to help offset the cost of running the annual shows, but the next thing I knew the deal was done between the council and Venues NSW, which has taken control of the Showground, and all the rent money is going to Sydney. We were originally told that we would be able to display the collection at the annual shows and that part of it could be exhibited during the weekly farmers’ markets, but that hasn’t happened,” Mr Evans said. He said, however, that to the best of his knowledge the collection was being safely stored.
The City of Newcastle spokesperson wrote that: “City of Newcastle has incurred costs of almost $1.5 million supporting the Newcastle Maritime Museum Society since at least 1998. This includes more than $170,000 incurred storing the collection on behalf of NMMS since 2018. The last funds paid to NMMS by City of Newcastle was in 2015 when Ken Gouldthorp was [city] General Manager”.
Maritime Museum president Bob Cook said a meeting was planned for the near future with new Newcastle Lord Mayor Ross Kerridge at which it was hoped some progress might be made.
The City of Newcastle spokesperson wrote that: “At the time of its closure on 23 May 2018, it was operating under a long-term lease with Hunter and Central Coast Development Corporation (then known as Hunter Development Corporation), which is an agency of the NSW Government. The former home of the Maritime Museum continues to be owned by the NSW Government and therefore any questions regarding the suitability of that building should be directed to either the Hunter and Central Coast Development Corporation or the State Member for Newcastle”.
City of Newcastle also supplied this link to a council staff report presented to a council meeting in February 2024, outlining the council’s view of the situation at that time and revealing some of the internal dissension among Maritime Museum Committee members at that time.
I invited HCCDC to comment on the situation but the organisation declined my invitation. “We will decline an interview on the Lee Wharf A site. We’re currently working with Hope Estate on a hospitality venue in the building and will update our Honeysuckle works page when we have news to share on the project,” a spokesman wrote.
HCCDC also refused to confirm or deny that the Lee Wharf A building had been originally earmarked for community use. It refused to say whether it had been receiving rent over the years the building has been vacant.
Like many Newcastle people with an interest in the city’s past, present and future, I hope the impasse can be resolved and that the city’s amazing maritime past can be properly celebrated.
