Hippies to Pipis: Much of a Muchness (Newcastle)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Newcastle
Date:	20/11/05 (135 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautiful beaches, very laid back, cheap and cheerful, surf culture

Disadvantages: Best to get there by train...but then you do need a car to get around easily

New South Wales is not just Bondi and Sydney. In a nod to their British heritage, like anywhere in Australia you can find the deliciously exotic place names (Wollongong, Kogarah, Illawarra) interspersed with some more familiar sounding ones – like Liverpool, Cardiff and, indeed, Newcastle. This Newcastle, though, is on the water. It has gorgeous beaches, a lovely university-city feeling and an outdoorsy culture.

Newcastle is 2 and a half hours north of Sydney, and just south of Port Stephens. The journey up there is beautiful, especially if you go by train as the track runs by amazing stretches of water and woodland. Though most people chose to stay further north in one of the neighbouring tourist traps, we went to Newcastle because we had friends living there who we had met in Sydney. For somewhere that is not the largest tourist destination in the area, there is a good selection of accommodation, including hotel chains such as Ibis and Crowne Plaza, motels and B&Bs and a couple of backpacker hostels. We stayed in the YHA Newcastle Beach and the standard of accommodation was incredible. This cost the two of us 43 GBP in total for 2 nights.

The beaches in Newcastle are beautiful, and there are several coves and longer stretches nestled at every turn as you walk along the coast. The Ocean Baths, a gigantic, open air swimming complex opened in 1922, include a lap pool and a huge general pool, plus diving board. Here and on the beaches on either side of this were where we spent a lot of our time, swimming, body boarding (badly) and soaking up the sun. Heading out of town slightly you come across the Bogey Hole. Not as hysterically funny to Australians as it is to us (they favour the Americanism ‘booger’), this is a public pool cut into the tidal rock pool platform at ocean level. Just up the hill from here is King Edward Park, a peaceful place where lots of people get married and it was easy to see why as the gardens themselves were well tended, and the views stunning. Heading in the other direction brings you to Nobby’s Head (again, the Australians don’t seem to find this funny. We, on the other hand, haven’t yet stopped laughing). A 10 – 15 minute walk along a jut of headland brings you to the lighthouse and offers great views over to Stockton, home to more than 30km of sand dunes. You can’t climb the lighthouse as it’s not open to the public, but back at the Wharf there is a big, penis-shaped tower (honestly, this town is obsessed with the wacky and wonderful). This is open for fooling around in, is free and has 180 steep steps that take you to the top.

Shopping in Newcastle centre is focused around the Mall, a short stretch of pedestrianised precinct with a couple of arcades leading off it, and weekend markets down the middle. Despite the relative lack of shops compared to Sydney and even Hobart, we took time out to nosy round and dangerously stumbled across a very good shoe shop. In Australia generally you can get in to bars and clubs in trainers but not in flip-flops. We had come clad in the latter, and so really needed some new things to wear out that night... Going out in Newcastle at night, you can see the seamless merge of surf culture with student life. Wickham is a slightly dodgy end of town but has some adorable places, and is very friendly. We spent hours there hanging out in one of the pubs, listening to a friend’s band play. More in town and towards the beach there are more places than you’d imagine for a town of this size, including clubs such as Great Northern and a cool complex on the waterfront with bars and restaurants. We went to the Brewery a couple of times – for drinks one evening, and to sit in the blazing sunshine and listen to a band one afternoon. Prices here are reasonable and the biggest problem is ID – for foreigners the only things they’ll accept are a passport which is a pain to carry round or a photo card driving licence.

Eating out in Newcastle is like a lot of Australia – there is a wide range of international cuisine on offer, and prices just seem so cheap by European standards. The Newcastle Bakehouse next to The Mall does fab breakfasts and cakes (and breakfast cakes too…we were having 2 courses at every meal that weekend). Esta Café, down near Newcastle Beach is open early (breakfast from about 7am…and the best pain au chocolat I have ever sampled) until late (we had a 10pm Gelato stop there on our first night). It overlooks the sea with inside and outside seating, and the food is awesome. The Bogey Hole Café sounds worrying but has unusual, modern food and the portions are huge enough to rival something the USA might throw out. For evening dining, Darby St is like a little Notting Hill with far too many delicious places to choose from. Dinner for 3, including 3 courses and drinks cost us $68 (27 GBP) and we were stuffed afterwards.

We went up for 48 hours, arriving Friday after work and coming back Sunday evening, so time was limited. In addition to all the swimming and shopping and scoffing mentioned above, we also fitted in a half day trip. You can go alone but doing it with a guide gives you the history and context that just seeing something can’t offer. A few companies offer vaguely the same trips, but I can highly recommend Sand Safaris who we went with: www.sandsafaris.com.au or tel: 02 4965 0215. The guide we had was fun, slightly crazy and a fountain of knowledge on the area, and the trip was superb. Leaving from Williamtown, a small place 30 mins out of Newcastle that is home to little more than the RAAF base (pronounced raff not rarf or even ruh-aff), we had just over 2 hours of adventure for out $39 (15 GBP each). This included a bouncy 4WD trip over the sand dunes, sand boarding down some sharp drops, digging for fresh mineral water (hidden just below the sand, but, incredibly, drinkable and nicer than local tap water…), World War 2 sites, lots of unusual local wildlife, some Pipi spotting and a trip to the famous Sygnia shipwreck. Much hilarity ensued when the conversation switched from hippies (who live on the beach and need to be removed) to pipis (random little mollusc things native to this area who shouldn’t be removed) and I didn’t make out the difference immediately, thus wondering how the ‘hippie dance’ went, and why little critters needed ‘pipi camps’. It was a really fun few hours and a trip different from anything we’ve done before. The only downside was transport as we went by public transport and a car is needed really in order to get there easily. We went by bus and arrived 1.5 hours early (Saturday timings are limited) then waited half an hour for a bus home that never arrived before flagging down a taxi and trying to put all memories of Wolfe Creek out of our minds.

A lot of my work colleagues questioned our desire to go to Newcastle, labelling it a dump with nothing to see or do. My question to them now I’m home is whether or not they’ve ever been, because we liked it immensely. The scenery is stunning, the people friendly and the beaches long, golden and sandy. There was more to see and do than we managed to fit in in our short visit, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to visitors to the area.


www.visitnewcastle.com.au/index2.html

Summary: From Bogey Hole to Nobby's Head, a town that's bizarre in the best possible way