Top Ten Best of Newcastle

Living in Newcastle is a great lifestyle experience where excessive traffic, standing around in queues and that impersonal feel of a city is completely absent.  Here, you can experience the beaches, bush or backyard whilst still enjoying the simplicity and freedom of a small regional town.  We'd also like to introduce Hunter Valley Hampers - an award winning local business making Christmas Hampers for 2014.  Newcastle is truly an inspirational city in the midst of a transitional development stage.

Here I have collected a selection of Newcastle's Finest - from the obvious to the mundane to the quite quirky - you may be surprised but you certainly won't feel let down.  Enjoy the top ten of Best of Newcastle and share your feedback, thoughts and commentary in the sections below.  Let's share the Best of Newcastle for everyone to experience.

Newcastle Region Art Gallery

Newcastle Regional Art Gallery

Our distinctive venue can be tailored to suit your requirements from smaller cocktail functions to larger, formal events – all in amongst some of the Australia’s most revered works of art from the Gallery’s collection. You can also choose to enhance your guests’ experience with a tour conducted by one of our Gallery guides.

Newcastle Review on Lonely Planet

Newcastle Lonely Planet Review

Sydney may possess the glitz and the glamour, but the state’s second-largest city has down-to-earth larrikin charm instead. Newcastle is the kind of place where you can grocery shop barefoot, go surfing in your lunch hour and quickly become best buddies with the Novocastrian sitting next to you in any bar.

Newcastle Airport Flight Schedule

Newcastle Airport Flight Schedule

Newcastle Airport is 25 minutes from both Port Stephens and Newcastle, on the east coast of New South Wales in Australia.  We’re ideally located to access, within an hour’s drive, amazing beaches in Newcastle and Port Stephens; world-class wineries in the Hunter Valley; a world-heritage listed rainforest, Barrington Tops; Australia’s largest salt water lake, Lake Macquarie; and some of the world’s most famous horse studs in the Upper Hunter.

Newcastle's Civic Theatre

Newcastle's Civic Theatre

Newcastle is Australia's seventh largest city and the 1520 seat Civic Theatre is one of Newcastle’s most popular and prestigious venues which holds a proud place in the hearts of Novocastrians. Designed by famed 1920's theatre architect Henry Eli White in his famous ‘Spanish Baroque’ style, a visit to the Civic Theatre with its grand marble foyer and staircase, terrazzo balcony, beautiful interiors and historic main auditorium chandelier, makes for a stunning and unforgettable experience.

Newcastle Herald Newspaper

Newcastle Herald Newspaper

The Newcastle Herald - a tabloid morning newspaper published Monday to Saturday - is the only Newcastle-based newspaper serving the entire Hunter and Central Coast regions, six days a week.  Newcastle Newspapers, publishers of The Newcastle Herald, The Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Star, the Port Stephens Examiner, the Lakes Mail and the Myall Coast Nota, also produces a replica digital edition of the Newcastle Herald, Monday to Saturday.

Newcastle Tourism Information

Newcastle Tourism Information

A top ten city in Lonely Planet's 'Best in Travel 2011' guide, Newcastle is a city of rich history, quirky culture and amazing scenery. We've got it all; beaches, countryside, bushland and cityscape.

Newcastle Jets Football Club

Newcastle Soccer Club

The history of the Newcastle Jets FC is inseparable from the history of football in the Hunter Region.  The environment in which football was established in Newcastle and the Hunter, with all its triumphs and failures, has created a proud history, a foundation and a legacy upon which the club has been created.

Newcastle City Council

Newcastle City Local Council

The Council of the City of Newcastle was formed in April 1938 with the merger of Adamstown, Carrington, Hamilton, Lambton. Merewether, Newcastle, New Lambton, Stockton, Wallsend, Waratah and Wickham Councils.

Newcastle Unemployment Rates

Newcastle Unemployment Rate Graph

Newcastle as a traditional area of heavy industry was not immune from the effects of economic downturns since the 1970s. These downturns were particularly hard hitting for heavy industry which was particularly prevalent in Newcastle. As Australia recovered from the early 1990s recession, the economy of Newcastle did too and the jobless rate rapidly fell. However, it consistently remained above that of NSW.

University of Newcastle

Newcastle University Campus

When you choose to study at the University of Newcastle, you choose a world-class university recognised for excellence in teaching and research. Our degrees will prepare you for the real-world and are designed to expose you to new ideas, new ways of thinking and equip you with the knowledge and skills to be successful in a competitive global market.

If You are looking for the Best of Newcastle, it's all here.

Newcastle Artisan Bakery

Newcastle has a thriving handmade and artisan scene - we are especially proud of Blackbird Artisan Sourdough - a local enterprise featuring slow made bread with ancient yeasts.  Carolyn Scott was recently featured in Find Handmade, a magazine style website where Australian artisans share their stories about being successful as stallholders at the local weekend markets.

Blackbird Sourdough

Carolyn Scott of Blackbird Sourdough

Carolyn is justly proud of the whole artisan baker’s skill set – a niche specialty of experienced bakers and chefs whom she calls the ‘band of bakers’ – all aware that by sharing their knowledge they are building the core of artisan bakers across Australia.  It is refreshing to hear an handmade artisan like Carolyn not troubled by imitation or competition – the very idea of a competitor learning your secrets is not what most stallholders fear.  But it is not easy to replicate – with high barriers to entry and set up costs mean it is not likely an artisan baker will be setting up shop on every corner anytime soon.

Carolyn’s own set up story is also worth sharing – after 30 odd years working her family business producing quail, partridge and game birds for fine dining restaurants, she used her chef’s and pastry chef’s experience and turned her hand to artisan sourdough baking.  But it was a few years before she sourced the commercial kitchen at Maitland Gaol as a basis for her enterprise.  Now, with a stellar fit out and enough room to fully pursue her interests, Blackbird Artisan Bakery is truly changing people’s lives.

You can read the whole story here, please feel encouraged to comment and make your thoughts known if you are a customer - I know you are out there.

Find Handmade in Newcastle

Selling handmade in Australia

Selling handmade in Australia is all about doing the hard yards and spending time facing a markets stall.  I've met many wonderful and talented people who are able to combine their artistic flair with the natural chutzpah to front a market stall.  But what if you don't want to front your own stall and spend your weekends spruiking your wares?

For sure you can keep selling with etsy and madeit – but nothing rivals the control and freedom of having your own online storefront.

No longer is the dream to create your own designs and one day open a shopfront in the high street – going forward the next step is opening an online store and selling in front of a global audience.

Let Organic Digital work with you a have your own wordpress online e-commerce solution working for your brand.  You can be up and running from as little as $1500 – AND we offer regular workshops where you can learn face to face how to manage and edit your own wordpress website.

Our mission to to build lasting relationships with you and stallholders like you across the artisan and handmade niche and empower you to take full creative and management control of your online presence.  You too can learn the skills to take control and be confident selling online, and Organic Digital is here to help you achieve that.

Best Newcastle Website Design 2013

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I did once partake in the pleasure of the company of the esteemed Internet Marketing Guru – and for a moment there, we made the connection (big deal back in those dial up days).  Yes indeed, haven’t we all met an Internet Marketing Guru? 

So, um yeah, at Newcastle Digital we can spin unique content and have your site zipping with traffic, especially locally and mobile where the biggest growth is forecast.  Crucially, Newcastle Digital fills a local niche and local mobile search is the future.  People want online support for where they are, right now.  No national clunky corporate can offer the specialized individual support we share when you build and manage your search engine optimization program, right here in Newcastle.

The Three Pillars of Wisdom any Internet Guru worth her salt will share with you are Original Unique Content dense with your niche specific keywords.  That means copy written original articles specifically about your niche, about your business and about the topics and issues that are current in your business and affect your customers.  Newcastle Digital has a University trained copywriter and we understand you would expect punchy, sales converting articles to promote your business.

The second Pillar of Wisdom is onsite optimization – that is a website that has all the SEO features that facilitate ease of indexing and findability.  Like seo friendly urls and attention to detail with alt tags and the like.  Onsite optimization is ensuring that your website has all the features that will make is easy to be found.

The Third Pillar of Wisdom, and one that is most difficult to define and track, is off page optimization.  This is where the search engine measures the number of links pointing to your site and measures the inbound links for quality, authority and relevance.  So you want links from respected industry organization ‘s websites and as opposed to links from free for all link farms based in Eastern Europe.  Get the picture?

So as an Internet Marketing Guru, sure, we may not be the High Lord Yogi or whatever, but we have learned enough over the years to propel websites under our management into the first page of the results and more importantly, to convert those website visitors into paying, profitable customers.