Newcastle in a page
The beaches. Newcastle Beach is the city’s beach, with the ocean baths at its northern end and the Bogey Hole, the convict-cut rock pool, along the cliff. Nobbys Beach runs to the breakwall and the lighthouse. South along the Anzac Memorial Walk is Bar Beach, then Dixon Park and Merewether, home to the largest ocean baths in the southern hemisphere and the surf that made the city famous.
The harbour. Walk the breakwall to Nobbys Lighthouse with the harbour on one side and the surf on the other, climb Fort Scratchley for the tunnels and the best view of the harbour mouth, and eat at Honeysuckle, where the restaurants and bars fill the old wharves. The light rail runs from Wickham interchange to the beach; the ferry crosses to Stockton.
Eat and drink. Darby Street in Cooks Hill is the brunch strip; Beaumont Street in Hamilton has restaurants from every cuisine; Honeysuckle is harbourside dining; the East End’s Hunter Street has the small bars. Ask us for this month’s favourites, they change.
Out of the city. Blackbutt Reserve has koalas, wombats and bush trails fifteen minutes from the beach; the Fernleigh Track is a fifteen-kilometre cycle path on the old rail line from Adamstown to Belmont; Lake Macquarie’s foreshores at Warners Bay and Wangi Wangi are half an hour south. The Hunter Valley’s cellar doors are an hour inland, and Port Stephens, with its dolphins and the Stockton sand dunes, an hour north.
Getting here. Newcastle is two hours from Sydney by road or train; Newcastle Airport at Williamtown is thirty minutes. Most of our homes have parking, a garage or a secure space; the page for each says which.