The story of Donald's Corner

When you were growing up in Hamilton’, I asked memoir writer Margaret Colditz ‘where was the money?’ 

‘The money’, she responded without a second’s pause, ‘was in Donald’s Corner’.

A Mine Manager's retreat - the AA Company house

Status is having a house on the crest of a hill, fireplaces in every room, and your own underground water tank  so you don’t have to queue to draw water with the wives of miners.

Status can also mean responsibility - lying awake, desperate for sleep, dreading the first light. Imagine that your boss, Superintendent of the AA Company, [1] has commissioned you to bring in ‘scab labour’ from Victoria and South Australia, and to destroy the coal miners union, once and for all.

The making of Hamilton

There was not a decent street or footpath in Hamilton; they had creeks and watercourses in every direction.[1]

Truly, the place looked deserted and miserable, no one to be seen but poor old Murphy and his double team dragging a barrow load of coal through the yielding sands into which the wheels of his dray....were sinking almost to the axle.[2] 

These were just some of the challenges facing Hamilton’s first Municipal Council in 1872.

Boy boxer from Burnt Bridge

He wore green satin shorts with a white star, and was promoted in boxing circles as Puerto Rican rather than Aboriginal, because of racial prejudice at the time.

Masonic Hall

The queue surged with a life of its own along Beaumont Street. An excited buzz rose from the young crowd, dressed to dazzle in their up-to-the-minute gear.

I was on an evening walk with my husband, not long after we had moved to Hamilton, when we encountered what we thought was a nightclub with a line of people waiting to enter. A little surprised that our new suburb apparently had a nightclub, we crossed the street. Looking back, we saw that the building creating so much anticipation was the Masonic Hall, alias The Depot.

Gelateria Arena

She was working full time at the age of 11, travelled alone by ship from Genoa (Italy) to Sydney to marry a man she had not seen for five years, and cooked meals for 60 diners a night in a cafe in Beaumont Street, Hamilton. And by the way, Silvia Saccaro raised three children.

Missing from Beaumont Street

'All these shops, but nowhere to buy a nail!'

This was my husband’s recurring lament, after we moved to live in Hamilton. We love being in close walking distance to a wide range of shops and services. It wasn’t long, though, before we discovered some serious gaps in the retail mix.

The romance of timber

'Timber is the thing,' Frank Standen told his daughter Jan. 'It’s all in the taste.'
Years later, her father long gone, Jan Pilcher wishes she had asked him what he meant.

'My beloved Beaumont Street'

'I was so happy growing up there, and have tried to recall the events and experiences that made it so. I want others to be happy there, in the future.'

So wrote Margaret Colditz, in May 1990. The earthquake in December, 1989 had changed Hamilton’s main street irrevocably. People who had lived there all their lives told her they felt that with the terrible carnage to the street, 'part of them had died.'

Hamilton Chinese - the Mook family

'I could wrap you up in newspaper and there wouldn’t be a gap anywhere!'

This somewhat startling skill comes from working in Mook’s Fruit Shop after school in 1960s Hamilton. Along with wielding an alarming knife to slice up the tough Queensland Blue pumpkins, it is one of the many skills of Teresa Purnell.

'So who are the other Chinese who came to Hamilton in the earliest days?' I ask Teresa.

'We are the Hamilton Chinese', is the rapid reply.

The Miller’s legacy

'You can sit next to him. He’s one of those'.

George Yanis was 8 years old, in 3^rd class at Tighes Hill Primary School. The boy told to sit next to George was Vancho Jovanovski, a Macedonian from what was then Yugoslavia. Since George could speak Greek, Macedonian and English, his teacher thought George could take Vancho under his wing. They spoke Macedonian to each other at first, and Vancho learned English.

George always remembers being dubbed one of those.

Greater stories to be told

'I rushed out the front door - everyone was coming out of their homes. I looked towards Beaumont Street from our elevated front driveway. I could see the Greater tower – it was leaning to the left side, not vertical, it appeared to be wavering, and I thought, This is not good!'

Why does a blacksmith have a shop?

It was his private retreat, even though the sound of hammer against anvil blasted my five year old eardrums. I loved crouching against the slab timber wall at a safe distance, watching my father lean into the silken shoulder of one of his beloved horses, the animal lifting its front leg as a magical reflex.

Survival of a stately home

It means 'a pile of rough stones'. One of Hamilton’s rare surviving late Victorian homes, Fettercairn is truly a survivor. Over the past 110 years, it has reinvented itself time and time again. Built in 1903 for Mr and Mrs Ramsay Gow, the imposing two storey, 50 square house was an unambiguous statement by its owners of achievement and prosperity.

Who’s been sleeping in my house?

The popularity of the television series of this name shows how keen many of us are discover the human dramas that might have played out in the house we now occupy. One of the quests of this blog is to find out much more about the history and the secrets of the land, the buildings and the people around my home in Hamilton.

'Blow it up over my dead body!'

'A couple of days after the earthquake, I was at home in the parsonage in Beaumont Street when there was a knock on the door. I opened it to a policeman, who told me – the Army is about to blow up the church. They want you there!' 

That was John Mason, Minister of the Hamilton Wesley Church  1985 - 1992.

Wesleyans of Pit Town

Pressing his nose against the glass as I hold him up to our high front window, my three year old grandson stares transfixed at the floodlit church tower. Springing from the darkness, it’s so close we can almost touch it, this cake decorator’s fantasy of lacy outlines, turrets and slim arches.

When good news is front page news

To discover and tell stories about Hidden Hamilton, people need to know what I am looking for. What better opportunity to reach people than an article in The Post - the independent local newspaper that reaches upwards of 140,000 households?

Whose head is it, really?

Wrestling with the unwieldy pipes, the busy scaffolder took little notice of the small sculpture above the doorway, the head of a bearded man. An earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale had devastated Newcastle on 28 December, 1989, and he was flat out assembling protective structures around buildings all over the city. In the scheme of things, what did a bit more damage to an old plaster head matter?

'Crushed between two coal skips in the Borehole Colliery, Hamilton'

Ten stark, simple words, in an email sent to me by Hunter historian, Fr Brian Roach. Ten words, carrying the story of a terrible death, a family tragedy and the weight of more than a century’s collateral damage from the coal industry in the Hunter.

Tale of two buildings

At the end of last week’s post, I reflected on the lost hotels of Denison Street, and asked the question – why do some buildings endure, while others crumble or face demolition? I found at least part of the answer in two local buildings.[1]

Hotel hey-day in Denison Street, Hamilton

If you think Hamilton has more than its share of pubs today, it is nothing compared to the late 1800s. Denison Street (or Winship Street, until it was renamed in 1855) was the main thoroughfare through the mining settlements, leading from Cameron’s Hill towards Newcastle.

How Hamilton got its name

At one time or another, most of us have criticised  our city council. Yet the story of Hamilton shows vividly how the origins of local councils were rooted in the desires of ordinary men and women for a healthier, safer and more attractive living environment for their families. I like to think of this as the original grass roots/self-help movement.

What's under my house in Hamilton?

'There are mine shafts under the whole of Newcastle', our north coast solicitor told us. We were meeting to begin the paper work for the purchase of our next home, in Hamilton. He was half joking, and slightly exaggerating, I hoped.

Lost bakery found in Webster Street, Hamilton

Webster Street yielded up one of its secrets to me after I stumbled across some photographs of Pearce’s Bakery on the Facebook site Lost Newcastle .  From Susan Henderson and her mother, Joan Lean, and later from other descendants, Peter Pearce and William Pearce, I learned about the family that established this bakery in 1899.

Hamilton Turkish baths

I was captivated by this exquisite photograph of the Hamilton Turkish Baths. This brick and stucco building was designed in the Victorian Filigree style, with decorative cast iron friezes on the upper verandah and colonnade. What’s more, their address was somewhere in Denison Street, with which my street intersected.