Hi & welcome to Rob & Carol's HOMEPAGE. We would like to share with you our lifestyle..... where we live, our family & what we enjoy most, exploring & camping with our camper trailer. 

We live at Stockton a suburb of Newcastle, NSW, on the east coast of Australia, about  a one &  a half hour drive north of Sydney. Our suburb is a peninsular, therefore we are surrounded on one side by the Tasman Sea which is part of the Pacific Ocean & the Hunter River.

Stockton sits at the bottom of a beautiful 32 kilometre long unspoilt beach. The dune system is the longest continuous outer barrier in New South Wales & is approximately 11,000 years old. Stockton Bight Coastal Sand Dune Ecosystem

Both Carol & I were born on Stockton & have lived here all our lives. It is a great place to live. We have two children, Lana & Patrick & three grand daughters, Brydie Jayne born 7th July 2004, Mia Louise born 7th October 2009, Lily Jayne born 4th February 2012 & a grandson, Kai John born 9th June 2016.  

 Newcastle Harbour is a busy port for international shipping. Coal & grain are the two main cargos which are exported to destinations all over the world. Newcastle Port Corporation handled 53,000,000 tonnes of coal in 2013.

There are basically three different sized coal ships that enter the port. Handy size (20,000 to 35,000 tonnes capacity) & a Handy Max 35,000 to 50,000 tonnes capacity) which loads & discharges from river ports around the world. Then there is the Panamax size (50,000 to 90,000 tonnes capacity) able to sail through the Panama Canal. And the Cape size (90,000 to 180,000 tonnes capacity) which can sail around the Cape of Good Hope & Cape Horn, but are too large to enter the Panama Canal. Newcastle Port Authority

Newcastle has a temperate climate. Hot summers are cooled by a reliable nor'east  sea breeze, while winters are cool to cold with the colder blasts coming off Antartica. It does occasionally snow in winter on the 1500 metre high Barrington Tops some 100 kilometres to the northwest. Hunter Valley Weather  

Newcastle & the Hunter River Valley have a fascinating history. The first Europeans to visit the Newcastle area was a party of marines in a ships longboat in 1797 lead by Lt. John Shortland looking for escaped convicts from Sydney's penal colony. Exploring the lower reaches of the river the party found seams of coal in the sandstone cliff faces, Shortland named it Coal River. It wasn't long till the worst convicts were moved to the Coal River to work in coal mines, burn oyster shells to make lime for building mortar & also to harvest cedar which grew along the banks river further upstream. The convicts formed rafts of cedar logs & floated them back down to the Coal River penal colony. The logs were then shipped to Sydney for government building works which still stand today.  Coal River Heritage

Before European settlement the area north of the harbour was inhabited by the native Worimi Aboriginal people for some 15,000 years. The Worimi were made up of several tribes of which the Maiangal people, which is pronounced Mayan-gahl, inhabited the Stockton Bight area from the Hunter River north to the Tomaree Peninsular on the southern shores of Port Stephens. Their rich & well established culture did not last long after Europeans took up farmlands & grazed livestock on their traditional land. It is a shame the only remains today is on the Sydney Sandstone rock platforms in the form of mystical totem engravings,  along with hand, tool & weapon stencils inside caves. Worimi people

   

The geology of the area is also of interest. Newcastle sits on a thick layer of sandstone built up over millions of years of sediments. These sediments also hold vast coal seams which are mined & exported around the world. Hunter Valley Coal

 

Track Trailer photo page 10 - https://www.robcaz.net/more_track_pics10.htm

NEW Seaton's Farm - https://www.robcaz.net/seatons_farm.htm

Paterson River page 9 - https://www.robcaz.net/lostock9.htm

Nowendoc National Park page 4 - http://www.robcaz.net/nowendoc4.htm

Budds Mare Oxley Wild Rivers National Park - http://www.robcaz.net/budds_mare.htm

 

please drop us an email

 

 

 Built by Rob  -  July 2004
updated  - November 2024