When Sydney came to Newcastle
The second HMAS Sydney only visited Newcastle once, between September 10 and 13, 1938. More than 10,000 people visited the ship during the three hours it was open on Septermber 11.
Newcastle girls helped build bombers
Mollie Clewett was 21 years old and had only been married a year on November 29, 1943 when she started working as a machinist at Newcastle’s Lysaghts plant. It was wartime, and ever since the Japanese submarine bombardment of Newcastle, people in the city were acutely conscious of how much was at stake. Thousands of Hunter men were away fighting, creating a shortage of labour for vital war industries and opening opportunities for young women like Mollie to work in jobs that would have been closed to them just a few years before. Mollie's husband, Dick,…
Newcastle’s lost map-of-the-world pool
So many myths surround Newcastle’s lost and lamented Young Mariners’ Pool, with its legendary concrete map of the world. Many people believe the lost continents still lie beneath the sand, and that determined digging will reveal them in their former glory. Alas, the fact is that only some fragments of the map sections around the edge of the pool remain to be exposed from time to time. Most of the concrete map was broken up by Newcastle City Council - apparently in the 1970s - and the pieces were dumped off Nobbys breakwater to supplement the…