Some Australian cities – Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide – make it so easy to fall in love with them. Others… well, others make you work a little harder to uncover their charms.

Until recently, all I really knew of Newcastle, a coastal city in New South Wales around 150 kilometres north of Sydney, was that it holds the title of Australia’s biggest coal port. I’d seen the footage of courageous climate protestors in kayaks, blockading the harbour and preventing the movements of the 250-metre-long bulk carriers that head out into the Tasman Sea, carrying coal to China, Japan, and elsewhere in Australia.

We have started a lovely tradition in our family of taking it in turns to spend a weekend of the school holidays in a new city with DorkySon. He and DorkyDad went to Canberra; he and I went to Adelaide; and then he and DorkyDad went to Melbourne. Last weekend, he and I went to Newcastle. Or Newy, as I now know the locals refer to it.

I had wondered how prominent the heavy industries would be. The road in to Newcastle from the airport on Friday afternoon provided a quick and easy answer – very. We passed huge bulk carriers, coal conveyor belts and storage silos, production facilities for explosives and plastics and fertilisers. As our cab made its way along Hunter Street to our hotel in the East End, passing what felt like literally hundreds of shuttered shopfronts and empty buildings, DorkySon and I exchanged glances. What had we let ourselves in for?

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