The port of Newcastle is the world's largest coal exporter and its coal handling facility is set to double yet very little of the profits from coal mining seem to be spent on our town. Resources are extracted at a furious pace but it appears hardly anything is given in return. Newcastle has some real architectural gems built when money stayed in the town but now there seems so much decay. The main street is rundown and our town has a crumbling, underfunded infrastructure and high unemployment so who benefits?
Working class access to our community beachfront spaces is under growing threat from sequential development of public land on the coast. Local demands for the defunct Newcastle East bus terminal land, with its panoramic views of the beach, to be turned into a city park for everyone were ignored. Instead it was privatised and became luxury apartments with billboards that proclaimed it as: "Newcastle's most exclusive address".
These newly built apartments overlook the public skate park at Newcastle Beach - now influential people are calling it an eyesore. It was never a problem before the luxury development arrived so perhaps its just the politics of envy in reverse. Anyway for us commoners its the apartments that are the real eyesore. Not content with excluding the community from alienated public land they now want to take away our skate park as well. What next?
Plenty, using the pretext of maintenance issues, the state government plans to deprive our community of its rightful heritage by closing public access to the Bogey Hole. This is not only an invaluable part of our cultural heritage but a priceless recreational and social asset for our youth and families. If the state government can't afford basic maintenance of public assets then why not get King Coal to pay its fair share for our town's upkeep?
Photographs and comment by Bernadette Smith
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