Well, we moved to Newcastle at the beginning of this year.  We weren't expecting much.  In fact, we were expecting very little indeed.

We'd come from a rather nice year up in the north coast of New South Wales, with the last six months in Kingscliff/Murwillumbah, which is a beautiful beachside town just ten minutes from the Gold Coast.

Newcastle is still beachside, but it's hardly the Gold Coast.  Plus, we were going from a retirement village atmosphere to something we thought might be a bit red-neck and industrial.

Well, I'm happy to say we were wrong - very wrong.  I don't think we've met a friendlier bunch of people anywhere than in Newcastle.  Just about everyone we've met has been very nice indeed.  Plus, the beaches here are very good (if not quite as good as the Gold Coast, plus have the added hazard of blue-bottle jellyfish), and we've found the eateries here to be very good indeed (once you know where they are).

We have yet, however, to find a really nice cafe.

Instead, we have discovered what must be the best cake shop in the southern hemisphere - Euro's at Blackbutt.  They make the best mud-cake that has ever graced our lips.

Anyway, enough of that.  On with the pictures...

Click on the pictures for a larger version...

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1. Akiko outside our rather nice little two bedroom flat.  Looks good, heh?  Read on...
2. A view of one of the Newcastle beaches, shot from the inside of the RAV4 you can see in the previous photo.
3. Well, the flat that looked good was actually really disgusting to start with - we had a serious coachroach infestation problem.  This is me kicking some coachroach butt - all the little black things are dead roaches.  We killed 40+ (we did a body count) that all scrambled out of the oven when we turned it on...

d.       e.      f.

4. Akiko contemplating some pot-plants at Adamstown Market, which is held at a church ground just around the corner from us every Sunday.  I think the guy in the red cap is contemplating Akiko...
5. Another view of the market, from up a tree that was handy.  This probably gives you a view of about 1/4 of the market, so you can see it's not huge, but not too small either.
6. Akiko browsing a book on flower decorating at the market.  Hmmm - mother's day gift potential?

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7. Newcastle can actually be quite beautiful in spots.  This is Queen's Wharf at sunset, looking east.
8. This is in a restaurant at Queen's Wharf, called Blue Water Pizza.  They make pizza unlike anything we've had before.  They are actually healthy.  I kid you not.   Sorry about the fuzziness of the picture - I did an extra long exposure to avoid using the flash, and my hands aren't as steady as they used to be...
9. A view from Queen's Wharf of the Newcastle industrial area by night.  I think we're looking at a refinery here, but the BHP steelworks might be in there somewhere (if they haven't already closed down).

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10. A view of the Hunter Mall (sort of like Burke Street Mall) in central Newcastle.   Generally speaking, the centre of Newcastle is pretty dead.  And that's being generous.  They're trying to liven it up a bit, and part of that was an end of financial year "CRAZY SALE" - which we went along too - and at which you can see Akiko browsing at some benches set up outside a bookshop.
11. Chaddies Cafe, in the local shopping centre, and recommended to us.  Nice setting.   That's the best you can really say about it, unfortunately.  The food is very average and highly overpriced (unless you like to pay $7 for a salad sandwich).
12. The Canton Cafe - a reasonable chinese restaurant.  Extremely cheap (yay!) and they do Char Kway Teow (my favourite).  Frequented by the local overseas student population, they open at ridiculous hours (5pm to 3am).

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13. Lake Macquarie - a very large lake (well, seems big to us - this is just a small portion of it) about 20 minutes drive south of us.  I almost was going to work at a practice here.  Would've been a nice setting.

14. A view of the top floor, main corridor, John Hunter Hospital (which is where I was working at the beginning of 1999).  It's hard to tell the perspective, but here you get to see from one end of the corridor down to about the middle - you can't see the other half.  In real life, it looks looooong.  Impressive in some ways, but it's a really dumb design, especially if you have to trudge from one end to the other several times a day (someone said it was 500m from one end to the other, but I think it's more like 250-300m).  Why couldn't they bend it into a square or something?  I took this shot while I was on evening shift.

15. The Newcastle foreshore at dusk.  Pretty good photo, huh?  Took it with a Kodak DC120 digital camera on auto setting, so I can't really take the credit.

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16. We started going to Newcastle OCF (Overseas Christian Fellowship) in early September 1999.  The second week we were there, there was an outing organised to the "Wetlands".  I think Wetlands is a nice name for "Swamp".   Actually, it was rather nice - it might be a glorified swamp, but it's been quite nicely tended to.  Here's some of the OCFers during the lunch break.
17. I call this photo "DIE SAUSAGE - DIE!"  The photos here don't show the canoeing part of the outing, which was the most fun.  There were totally unco-ordinated paddlers lurching all over the rather interesting little waterways.   Akiko even managed, quite accidentally, to flip a rather decent sized fish into our canoe - it was probably about 20cm long or so.  We didn't keep it to toss on the BBQ.
18. Munch munch munch.

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19. A view along the Newcastle foreshore, early in the afternoon.  We took these pictures in September '99, just after our trip to the Wetlands.
20. This is a view of the "Customs House", which now has quite a nice cafe - a very nice place to have an iced coffee on a sunny day!  Good views of the water, depending on where you sit.  Akiko has no idea what she's done with her shoulders here.
21. I was surprised to see just how big the tug boats really are!
22. There was a sailing race that afternoon, which made for a pretty sight.

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23. Well, what do you know.  This is central Newcastle.  The view from Hunter Street (the main drag) is horrendous.  But the view from around the back - well, it's not so bad!  This was quite a revelation to me today (6/11/99).  The building is, I believe, the Town Hall.
24. The bloke here in the foreground is Kevin, the reason I got to see this side of Newcastle.  I took the photo of the Town Hall from just outside the library - in the same building as the library, there was a photo exhibition, part of which is seen here.   Kevin (incidentally, the outgoing Newcastle OCF president) is a keen photographer.
25. Another shot from outside the library, looking towards the Town Hall.
26. A nice little church, again, seen from just outside the library.