The Kent

Acrobatic dogs balanced on two front legs on impossibly slim posts, somersaulted, danced and waved goodbye. Responding to the skilful hands of trainer Mr Bill Massey, the small dogs enthralled kids and adults alike. [1]

Nina's IGA - Family Kiriakidis

If you walk into Nina’s IGA expecting a one-size-fits-all suburban grocery, be ready to be surprised. Nina’s is anything but average.

From sandy track to Eat Street - the becoming of Beaumont Street

It’s the cosmopolitan Eat Street of Newcastle – and so much more. Say ‘Beaumont Street’ and ‘multicultural eats’ springs to mind – not just the first comers the Italians and Greeks, but nowadays  Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Himalayan, Mexican, Turkish, Lebanese and Fijian. 

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’.

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!'

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.

'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.

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?