© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Read more about the article How the Cold War shaped David McLean’s life

How the Cold War shaped David McLean’s life

Popular Newcastle bookseller David McLean came to Australia from the US with his parents in 1963, fleeing the shadows cast by the Cuban missile crisis. Here are some of David's recollections: David McLean was in his second-last year of high school in Lincoln, Nebraska, when then US President John F. Kennedy appeared on television to warn the nation that the USSR was placing nuclear missiles on Cuba and that the USA had no option but to take firm action. The news filled millions of Americans with dread, and David's parents - his father had been a…

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Read more about the article Newcastle Showground’s past and future
Part of the Showground during the 1985 Show

Newcastle Showground’s past and future

The mistake was made - in all innocence - back in the 1970s. That at least is how Peter Evans, the president of Newcastle's Show Committee, sees it. According to Mr Evans, it was in the 1970s that the Newcastle Agricultural, Horticultural and Industrial Association was incorporated. "That's when the committee should have ensured that title in the Showground was transferred to the new incorporated body," he said. "Instead, it was left as it had been since 1905, vested in the trustees." That, in Mr Evans' view, left the door open for a future State Government…

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Read more about the article When the system failed the river was life
Boatshed homes on the Hunter River at Hexham in 1941. Photo by R. Donaldson for Pix magazine. State Library of NSW

When the system failed the river was life

When the Great Depression hit in the early 1930s, people who had forgotten what hunger felt like were suddenly and forcefully reminded. Around Newcastle and the Hunter, desperate people without jobs or income walked away from homes when they couldn't afford rent or rates. They sold their bank accounts (many of them frozen) for pennies in the pound. Hundreds of families set up makeshift homes wherever they could find undisputed space. Camps of huts built of whitewashed hessian and tin sheets flattened from kerosene cans sprang up on the outskirts of the towns. Some people "went…

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