Things to do in Newcastle NSW

Nature · Nobbys to Merewether, along the coast

A six-kilometre clifftop and beach path linking Nobbys, Newcastle Beach, the Bogey Hole, Bar Beach and Merewether, taking in two sets of heritage ocean baths.

Local tip: Do the whole thing south to north at sunrise and swim at the Merewether Baths at the end — the largest ocean baths in the southern hemisphere, free, and full of locals doing laps before work. The Bogey Hole, cut into the rock by convicts in 1820 for a commandant's private bathing, is halfway and easy to walk straight past.

Nature · Two kilometres south of the CBD

A National Surfing Reserve with a consistent beach break, a headland, and the city's best swimming, all inside the suburb boundary.

Local tip: Merewether is where the surf is and Bar Beach is where the crowds are; walk the extra five minutes south and the water empties out. Check the Surf Life Saving beach report before you go — the flags move, and the stretch between the two headlands generates serious rips on a big swell.

Landmark · The harbour mouth

A coastal fort that fired on a Japanese submarine in 1942 — the only Australian fort to have engaged an enemy — on the headland where the harbour meets the ocean.

Local tip: The tunnels tour is genuinely good and the view over the harbour entrance from the gun emplacements is the best in the city. Time it to watch a bulk carrier come in; the pilots bring ships through the heads all day and it is free theatre from the fort's walls.

Food · Inner west, 3km from the CBD

A long Greek, Italian and Lebanese eating strip that predates Newcastle's café boom by fifty years, still family-run along most of its length.

Local tip: This is the old Newcastle rather than the redeveloped harbourside one. Come on a weekday evening, eat where the menu is in two languages, and finish at the Kent — the beer garden is a local institution and it fills from five, not nine.

Landmark · 45 minutes west, around Pokolbin and Lovedale

Australia's oldest wine region — semillon and shiraz on old vines, with cellar doors, restaurants and a lot of Sydney weekend traffic.

Local tip: Go on a weekday and stay north around Broke and Lovedale rather than the Pokolbin coach circuit. Hunter semillon is the region's genuinely distinctive wine — low alcohol, ages for decades, and almost nobody outside Australia has heard of it. Use a driver; the RBT presence on the road home is heavy and constant.

Neighborhood · Across the harbour mouth, five minutes by ferry

A peninsula suburb between the harbour and the ocean, reached by a passenger ferry from Queens Wharf, with a thirty-kilometre dune system starting at its northern end.

Local tip: The ferry is the cheapest and best thing to do in Newcastle — five minutes each way, and the harbour view from the water beats every lookout. Walk north from Stockton onto the Worimi dunes, which run all the way to Port Stephens and are the largest moving coastal sand mass in the southern hemisphere. Note the beach itself has serious erosion problems the council has been fighting for years.