91. Newcastle

Instead of going to the Hunter Valley directly, we decided to base ourselves at Newcastle for the weekend. Before I left work on the Friday I asked one of the other doctors what Newcastle was like. Matt, who is extremely well travelled, said to me, “It’s like Newcastle in England but with none of the good bits.” How right he was.

We headed up the coast on the train at about 7pm and it was already dark. There was no view out the side of the train and for 2 hours we sat on the uncomfortable chairs reading books and listening to ipods. Once we arrived at Newcastle we got out at the terminal and waited for about 15 mins for a taxi. We eventually got a lift to the Hotel by Gordolla the Hutt (which seemed to be a running theme of the taxi drivers in Newcastle – they were all over 20 stone) and dumped our things and went in search of some dinner.

Walking through the streets of Newcastle was… interesting! Having spent so much time living in Glasgow there’s not a great deal that should bother me when it comes to dark streets and local thugs. However, Newcastle was so dark! There were almost no street lights and we had no idea where we were going. The directions that the girl at the hotel had given us seemed good at the time but the map she provided was useless as it was too dark to read it and the torrential rain pretty much destroyed it.

Eventually we found the elusive Derby St which is where all the restaurants and bars were and dined on two of the most incredible Pizzas that I’ve ever tasted. Pumpkin, rocket and red onion just sounds so wrong but it was exceptional. When we left the rain was falling even harder and despite Isla’s attempts to keep us dry from above with her $1 brolly the 4 inch deep puddles were drenching us from below. Our jeans wicked the water right up to our knees. We got back to the hotel about 11pm, but since we were going to the Hunter Valley the next morning at 8am we were glad of the early night.

The next morning arrived and we met the bus at Newcastle bus station at 8:15am. It whisked us up to the Valley in about 90mins through miles and miles of straight and equally dull roads. We passed through a few uninteresting towns that wouldn’t have been out of place in Mel Brook's “Blazing Saddles” and I was constantly expecting Gene Wilder to jump out in front of the bus waving his six shooter shouting “I’m the Wayco Kid, I just shagged Lilly Von Shtup”.

(That bit was especially for Jo Keating!)

Anyway we were soon in the Valley and it was certainly worth the wait. I’d say that it was one of the best days that we’ve had since we arrived in Sydney. The vineyards were all great fun and although some wines were not as good as others the whole experience was excellent.

All too soon the day was over and we were on route back to Newcastle. The road back down was even more boring that the route up however this time we had a little bit of a vino buzz and plenty of things to chat about so it seemed like a shorter trip. Shortly we were back in Newcastle and I was a bit pissed off that we hadn’t opted to do the Valley trip directly from Sydney. In the cold light of day Newcastle seemed even more crap. I guess that the best way to describe it is as Sydney’s equivalent to Port Glasgow. Of course, if you don’t live in Renfrewshire then that’ll mean nothing to you but suffice to say that if Sydney is Catherine Zeta Jones then Newcastle is Michael Douglas.

We got back to the hotel and had a snooze for an hour to shake off the vino and then headed back out into “the town” for some dinner. This time we hit a Vietnamese restaurant which was amazing. The perfect blend of Chinese and Thai. Apart from a mental group of 40-somethings it was probably one of the best meals that I’ve ever had (except they got the order wrong and I had to send my dish back to the restaurant – after tasting it first of course).

The next day we had to check out early but luckily the hotel agreed to keep our bags for us. That meant we had the joy of exploring Newcastle… on a Sunday. Waste of time. The weather was rubbish and it kept spitting with rain. It was overcast and it made the beaches look terrible. One thing I couldn’t get over was the number of tankers that were moored about a mile off shore. At one point I was able to counter 37!!! Newcastle is one of the world’s biggest exporters of coal and I later heard that it was costing the town £1,000,000 PER DAY to have all those ships moored out there. Apparently they don’t have enough coal to fill them all and the tankers refuse to leave until they have a full cargo. So after spending ages looking at all the ships and wondering why all the surfer dudes were all still spending time in the diesel drenched water, we went for a walk.

There really seemed no point to Newcastle. That was apparent by the fact that we walked for about 2 hours and we found almost no redeeming aspects to the town. Almost! A few things did strike us as cool. The first was the obedient, almost trained, pelicans. A few fishermen were trying to catch some dinner off the rocks at Nobby’s Beach and when they took their catch to be de-scaled and gutted on the sand the local pelican horde waited patiently for awful offal offerings. It was an impressive sight especially watching the gulls trying to rob the larger and far superior pelicans. I was surprised that the later didn’t try and eat a few seagulls. It would have been an easy catch.

The next thing that was astounding was the hundreds of Blue-Bottles (or box jellyfish) that were littering the shore. Thanks to the recent bad weather a storm front had washed loads of these, potentially lethal, bad boys up onto the shore. What I found more interesting than their beautiful colour or their gas filled bladder or the lengths of stinging tentacles, was the fact that some of the local kids were on the beach standing on them to make the bladders pop. Didn’t they care about the poisonous nature of this creature or were they just mental? Having seen a few of the locals behaving strangely during our stay in Newcastle, I decided that they were just mental.

Anyway, there really was only one place to go in Newcastle and that was the site of the obelisk. It was perched on top of a hill called “the Hill” which seemed appropriately inspiring as Newcastle itself. However, the view was spectacular and I’m glad we made it to the top. There was a 360 degree view of the whole local area and the breeze and the freshness blew away all bad thoughts about Newcastle.

Unfortunately, when I got back down to sea level I was happy to be grabbing the bags from the hotel and jumping on the next train to Sydney. It’s seems a bit of a shame that I hated Newcastle so much but then again I am in love with Sydney and therefore liking Newcastle would have been a bit cheating on Sydney.

As a total aside I though that I would show you a few funny things about Newcastle. The first revolves around the fact the Newcastle is well known for its art culture. There is a massive arty group in Newcastle and it is blatant when you walk down the main street. All the shops have paper mache characters plastered on the walls with crazy acid-induced artwork in the windows.

The next was the local police station. I don’t know if this place is real (since it was a Sunday it was closed – but it might have been closed every day of the week for all I knew). Anyway, it looked like there was room enough for about one prisoner (probably the Wayco Kid stayed there) and we realised why there was so much graffiti and vandalism.

I was glad to leave and when you see what the local nightclub is like I’m sure you’ll agree. It’s a dump with one or two things going for it but a dump none the less. I don’t think that we’ll be staying there again and next time we head to the Valley it’ll not be via Newcastle. What could have been the most amazing weekend ever was tainted by this travesty of a town.