Our house sits on land that was stolen from the Awbakal people to be farmed by convict labour. Then it was bought out by a mining company, then returned to farming until the farms were turned into residential blocks in the 1960s.1
When I first inspected the place, the owner (an older hippy whose husband smoked weed indoors) told me that theyâd chosen this location because it was away from all the pollution and flooding. It was also why we chose it.
Modern Newcastleâs aspirational narrative is that it has a long industrial past. Thatâs true, but heavy industry is still very much part of the present. The power plant and railway yards next to the CBD have been transformed into parkland and waterfront restaurants, but those parks and eateries still overlook the worldâs biggest coal port. Long trains with uncovered wagons full of coal from the Hunter Valley wind their way through Newyâs inner suburbs to the Port of Newcastle. On the 25-minute-long drive into town from the airport, tourists pass huge cranes and piles of coal four storeys high, waiting to be loaded onto ships.
Most of Newyâs trendiest suburbs were once the most working-class, and are still the most polluted. We couldn't afford a million dollar house in Mayfield, but we also didnât want to live there â itâs one of the cityâs most polluted suburbs. Local Facebook groups are full of people asking âwhatâs that noise/horrible smell/loud bang happening in my suburb?â. Recently an old wool store in the inner suburbs burned down. Its asbestos roof exploded from the heat and rained asbestos fibres over three suburbs. Parks were closed for weeks while EPA guys in space suits vacuumed up the fibres. People had to rip out their lawns and write off their cars.
Novocastrians are mostly unbothered by this stuff, which is crazy to me. A lady I spoke to who lives in the gentrifying suburb of Tighes Hill said that her roof cavity is full of coal dust, but at least the cafes are good. My physio told me she and her husband have a constant cough and a wheat allergy since moving to the trendy port-side suburb of Carrington (maybe the nearby coal loader and wheat silos could have something to do with this?) but they wouldnât want to be anywhere else.
So yes, Newy is beautiful, but it is also extremely polluted. We knew what we were getting into and are happy to live a bit further out if it means our washing doesnât get covered in coal dust. Our house came with beautiful established gardens from the longtime owners who sold to the hippies in 2018 and some bonus raised garden beds full of herbs and veggies from the hippies. Everyone weâve spoken to has told us to only grow food in lined, raised beds full of clean soil, and to get our soil tested by Macquarie Uniâs Vegesafe program2. Iâve been searching for a new hobby that doesnât involve screens or being in poorly-ventilated rooms, so the maintenance of the gardens has fallen mostly to me. I have no idea what Iâm doing, but Iâll soon find out if weâre getting lead poisoning from eating the spring onions the hippies left behind in the garden beds.
You canât have a healthy garden without bees. Unfortunately, a bee-less life is soon going to be the reality for greater Newcastle. A bee-killing parasite named Varroa mite was found at the Port of Newcastle a couple of months ago. When varroa mite got to New Zealand 20 years ago, it wiped out 80% of the countryâs European honeybee population. In order to attempt to âstarve outâ the parasite, this means that every single European honeybee within 50km of the port must be killed. Nobody in the exclusion zone area will be able to keep bees for 3 years. Itâs absolutely devastating for all beekeepers, bee enthusiasts and anyone who simply cannot TAKE another sign that the earth is collapsing (itâs me).
On the weekend I went to an event where local beekeeper and apiculture educator Anna Scobie spoke. Anna and her wife run Urban Hum, a beekeeping and education business. They also run (ran? Sad!) a bee sanctuary and have worked for the Department of Primary Industries on the varroa mite response. The DPI is destroying all hives and âbaitingâ wild European honeybees with poison-laced sugar water.
Iâm obsessed with the camellia tree in our front yard â which is full of birds and bees3 â so Annaâs remark that ânobody will be seeing bees in their camellia trees by Christmasâ really left a mark. Varroa wonât affect native bees, but not all native bees are as good at pollinating as the European ones.
I was quietly wondering why Anna was so composed about this horrible thing that has decimated her business and affected a huge part of her life. She must have sensed this, and told the audience.
âIf the bees were in charge of the situation, they would absolutely sacrifice themselves and their fellow bees for the good of the colony. When worker bees are too worn out to work, the hive leaves them out to die. Bees would happily agree to sacrificing everything in an exclusion zone for the greater good.â
Itâs something to think about. Iâm really going to miss them.
You bet your life I used the information in our contract of sale to hit the NSW state archives and all my local history haunts. I have so much material! Our neighbors have an original little miners cottage, and our place was sub-divided off that.
Vegesafe was recently in the news because people are ingesting lead via eggs from their backyard chickens. Yuck.
Not having sex with each other, obviously.