The Port of Newcastle is about 160 kilometers northeast of Sydney at the mouth of the Hunger River on Australia’s east coast. Born in 1801 as the Coal Harbour Penal Settlement, the Port of Newcastle grew up as an outlet for farm produce and coal. In 2006, over 140 thousand people called the Port of Newcastle home, and almost 500 thousand people lived in the urban area.

Before Europeans settled there, the Port of Newcastle was inhabited by the indigenous Awabakal and Worimi peoples. Lieutenant John Shortland was the first European to discover the area while searching for escaped convicts. He returned with news of coal and a natural deep water port. But Newcastle soon won a reputation for being a “hellhole” because the most dangerous convicts were sent there to dig in the coal mines.

At the beginning of the 19th Century, the Port of Newcastle was dominated by three groups: timber-cutters, coal hewers, and escaped convicts. The governor of New South Wales sought a better way to retrieve the abundant natural resources. A convict camp was established there in 1801 for coal mining and timber cutting. The first shipment of coal was sent to Sydney that year, but the settlement closed in less than a year.

The settlement of Coal River was established there in 1804 as a place for hard-to-discipline convicts. The town was soon renamed Newcastle after the coal port in England, and many of its namesake’s coal mining men immigrated to the Port of Newcastle.

Australia’s oldest public school was built in Newcastle in 1816, but it continued to be a penal settlement. In 1822, the settlement opened for farming. The last convicts were sent to Port Macquarie the following year. After that, settlers began to populate the territory. The Newcastle and Hunter River Steamship Company began to transport freight and passengers between Newcastle and Sydney.

The Port of Newcastle is the oldest seaport in Australia and the second largest in tonnage handled.

Coal mining became the Port of Newcastle’s major industry in the 1830s (the industry was gone by the early 1960s). Australia’s first railway was opened in 1831 to carry export coal to the Newcastle wharves. In the 1850s, an important copper smelter was established nearby, and a zinc smelter was built in the late 1880s.

In 1911, BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, chose the Port of Newcastle for its steelworks. Opening in 1915, the steelworks was the major employer for the area for 80 years, employing 50 thousand people for many years. The Port of Newcastle had a small shipbuilding segment which has been in decline since the 1970s.

During World War II, the Port of Newcastle’s industries were important to Australia’s war effort, making it a Japanese target. In 1942, a Japanese submarine shelled the city, causing minimal damage to the dockyards and the steel works.

The Port of Newcastle is the economic center for the Hunter Valley and much of northwestern New South Wales. It is the world’s largest port for exports of coal, with more than 85 million tons of cargo moving through the port each year. In 2005-2006, 80 million tons of coal was exported through the Port of Newcastle, making it an unpopular place for environmentalists.

By the time the steelworks closed in 1999, Newcastle’s era of heavy industry was over. Remaining manufacturers have moved away from the city to cheaper land and better access to highways and rail.

Newcastle Port Corporation manages and operates the Port of Newcastle, which has a solid infrastructure to handle a wide variety of cargos. Most of the trade through the port is bulk cargo (coal), but the Port contains ample facilities to handle general and breakbulk cargo and containers. The Port of Newcastle’s infrastructure includes coal terminals, a bulk liquid terminal, storage facilities, and connections with local and national rail systems.

The Port of Newcastle’s basin area is the site of general cargo handling, including containers, breakbulk, grain, and the port’s ship repair facilities. The Eastern Basin handles general cargoes that include aluminum, steel, and timber. All berths in this group have a draft of 11.6 meters. Eastern Basin No. 1 has a four-hectare area for stacking general cargo and a 7120 square meter warehouse. Eastern Basin No. 2 shares facilities with No. 1. Western Basin No. 3 contains a grain berth and storage silos with capacity for 157 thousand tons. Western Basin No. 4 is equipped with a heavy-duty berth for general and project cargo and has backup storage area of 1.5 hectares.

Formerly a cargo-handling berth, Throsby Berth No. 1 is now used for cruise and naval vessels. Throsby Basin is home to a floating dock for ship repair.

The Steelworks Channel Berth caters to bulk copper, lead, and zinc ore concentrates and has a capacity of service 1200 tons per hour. It is served by a train unloading station and a 35 thousand ton storage facility.

No. 4 Dyke Berth is dedicated to coal loading. Part of the Carrington Coal Terminal, it has capacity to load 25 million tons a year. No 5 Dyke Berth has capacity to load 25 million tons a year. No. 6 Dyke Berth is used for unloading coal from self-discharging vessels. BHP stopped producing steel in 1999, and its old port facilities have been taken over by the New South Wales government, which may develop them. Koppers Australia uses No. 6 BHP Berth to load and unload high-temperature bulk liquids.

The Kooragang Coal Terminal, covering 160 hectares, opened in 1984. Port Waratah Coal Services bought the facility from BHP in 1990 and invested $700 million to expand and update it. New rail receival facilities and stockpile capacity were added, and additional berths were built to increase the terminal’s capacity to 64 million tons per annum. After the expansion, Kooragang Coal Terminal has a capacity to handle 77 million tons. The Carrington Coal Terminal, covering 40 hectares, opened in 1976 with a capacity to load 16 million tons a year. Expansions at the terminal have brought its capacity to 25 million tons a year.

No. 2 Kooragang Berth services dry bulk products like fertilizers, phosphatic rock, ores, and meals. Designed to handle cottonseed and similar products, it is equipped with state-of-the-art dust extractors and has two multi-purpose 10 thousand meter storage sheds. It includes two bunker storage areas with a total capacity for 30 thousand tons.

The Australian Cement Newcastle Terminal in the Port of Newcastle has a capacity to store 27.5 thousand tons. It has a multi-cell silo complex and a 120-ton per hour batch tender that can produce general- and special-purpose cement blends. This state-of-the-art facility is serviced by road tankers and rail 24 hours per day.

The Cargill Australia Newcastle Tank Terminal is a bulk liquid handling and storage facility that handles non-hazardous bulk liquids like vegetable oils and tallow. Located next to the Kooragang No. 3 Wharf, in contains eight liquid storage tanks that can handle a total of nine thousand cubic meters.

Kooragang Bulk Facilities in the Port of Newcastle, also located at the No. 3 Wharf, handle unloading and storage for alumina and petroleum coke for the city’s aluminum smelters. The wharf is 190 meters long and is equipped with two vacuum unloaders than can handle 550 tons per hour. The storage facilities include three coke storage silos with capacity for 15 thousand tons each, three alumina storage silos with 35 thousand tons capacity, one alumina storage silo with 32 thousand tons capacity, one alumina storage silo with 16 thousand tons capacity, and one coke storage silo with 16 thousand tons capacity.

The Port of Newcastle’s Graincorp Ports Newcastle Terminal manages wheat, barley, oats, sorghum, canola, and chickpeas. Its main storage facilities can handle 164 thousand tons of cargo, and the western storage facilities can store almost 24 thousand tons. It also receives grains. It has a berth length of 228 meters at a depth of 11.6 meters. Graincorp exports cottonseed and other agricultural products through the new facility at Kooragong Island.

Newcastle Port Corporation owns East Basin No. 1 and 2 wharves for multi-purpose general, breakbulk, and containerized cargo. The East Basin is the center for general cargo activity in the Port of Newcastle. Its berth can handle vessels to 70 thousand DWT, and it has four hectares open storage area, 7120 square meters of covered storage, and 10 thousand square meters of off-wharf storage with rail access.

In the 2007-2008 trade year, the Port of Newcastle moved almost 89 million tons of coal, its single largest cargo. It also handled 1.3 million tons of alumina, one million tons of other bulk cargo, and a variety of other cargoes that include steel, petroleum coke, fertilizer products, wood chips, and grains.

Residents of the Port of Newcastle call themselves “Novocastrians,” and they are an industry-oriented population. The city’s old central business district contains several historic buildings, including the Christ Church Cathedral and the 1920s City Hall.

Fort Scratchley, which defended the Port of Newcastle in 1942 during the Japanese submarine attack, is now a military museum that is being restored. Nobbys Island is connected to the mainland by a pier that was built by convicts in 1846. Open to pedestrians, the pier borders Nobbys Beach and provides excellent harbor views.

Being about 70 nautical miles from Sydney, the Port of Newcastle receives few visits from cruise ships.