New book on local history: The Way We Worked
CRANING FOR A VIEW: A small gathering watches on as waterfront workers handle some cargo.
WOOD WORK: Stacks of timber sit by the harbour near tugboat Champion.
TOWN HAUL: Newcastle City Hall can be seen in the background of this shot of a railway crane at the waterfront in 1938.
Newcastle’s busy waterfront is shown in these photographs from last century.
In two of the photos, taken on November 2, 1938, the Craven railway crane is being used to help handle a piece of cumbersome cargo while numerous people look on.
In the horizontal view, the tower of City Hall stands at left.
Health and safety regulations have certainly changed a great deal in the nearly 80 years since these pictures were taken.
In the other view, dated 1946 – just after the end of World War II – the tug Champion stands alongside the wharf, near a huge stack of well-seasoned timber.
All three photographs come from a collection of negatives preserved by the late Ken Magor during his lifetime of collecting transport memorabilia.
The changing nature of the waterfront is one of the many themes of the new book, The Way We Worked, by journalist Greg Ray and his wife, Sylvia.
The book is the seventh published by the couple since they produced Newcastle, The Missing Years in 2010. They hope to further explore jobs, businesses and workplaces of the city’s past in future volumes. The Way We Worked is available for $40 from the Newcastle Herald office at 28 Honeysuckle Drive, Newcastle, and theherald.com.auonline bookstore as well as from participating newsagents and booksellers.