Description:
Newcastle is located on the east coast of Australia in the state of New South Wales (NSW). Coal mining began in the early 19th centrury, and from the 1850s encouraged the development of pit-top towns gathered around an increasingly busy river port. Coal mining shifted west into the Hunter Valley where there are still vast amounts of open pit coal production. Mining also encouraged industrial development in engineering, transport and, from 1915, iron and steel production. Deindustrialization in Newcastle dates from the mid-1970s and plant closures accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s as the steel works and other related manufacturing industries closed down.
Description:
There is a moment in travel writer Bill Bryson’s account of his travels in Australia, Down Under, when he comments on the large number of local histories he encounters in second‐hand bookshops. They ‘never fail to amaze,’ he reports, ‘if only because they show you what a remarkably self‐absorbed people the Australians are. I don’t mean that as a criticism. If the rest of the world is going to pay them no attention, then they must do it themselves surely.’ He continues: ‘There were hundreds of books ... about things that could never possibly have been of interest to more than a handful of people. It’s quite encouraging that these books exist, but somehow faintly worrying as well.’ Bryson doesn’t explain any further why it worries him, but he then goes on to review with genuine admiration a book he found among these volumes (126‐127).
Description:
There is a moment in travel writer Bill Bryson’s account of his travels in Australia, Down Under, when he comments on the large number of local histories he encounters in second‐hand bookshops. They ‘never fail to amaze,’ he reports, ‘if only because they show you what a remarkably self‐absorbed people the Australians are. I don’t mean that as a criticism. If the rest of the world is going to pay them no attention, then they must do it themselves surely.’ He continues: ‘There were hundreds of books ... about things that could never possibly have been of interest to more than a handful of people. It’s quite encouraging that these books exist, but somehow faintly worrying as well.’ Bryson doesn’t explain any further why it worries him, but he then goes on to review with genuine admiration a book he found among these volumes (126‐127).