The day the earth shook
Thirty-five years since the Newcastle earthquake and one of Australia’s worst natural disasters.
It was a warm summer morning on Thursday 28 December 1989 when a catastrophic earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale struck Newcastle, forever etching the date in the Hunter’s history.
As local residents went about their summer activities in the usually peaceful pause between Christmas and New Year, the earthquake hit the city at 10.27am. Claiming 13 lives, injuring 160 others and causing damage estimated to cost $4 billion, it shook the region in more ways than one.
Then five-year-old Nicole Somerville, owner and publisher of Hunter and Coastal Lifestyle recalls how she was happily playing one minute and running scared the next.
“My mum had not long had my baby sister Ashlee and I was at a neighbour’s place in the suburb of Holmesville,” Nicole said.
“I was on the ground with my favourite treehouse toy when the whole house began to violently shake. I leapt up and ran down the hall way calling for my ‘Aunty Julie’. I remember my mum telling me years later she had been desperately trying to get hold of my dad who was an underground coal miner and underground at the time. When they finally spoke, he had no idea about the quake and told her he hadn’t felt a thing.”
The worst of the earthquake’s effects occurred in and around the city centre, with hundreds of buildings damaged or reduced to rubble and a 1000 people were left without homes.
Reporting from the bus depot at the time of the earthquake, journalist Ross Hampton was captured on film during and in the frantic aftermath that followed on Beaumont Street.
“It looks as though bombs have hit, it’s like a war scene,” he described in the footage that shows members of the public and paramedics attempting to comfort people while digging through rubble and collapsed shop fronts.
Another long-time Newcastle resident, Ingrid Airlie, recalls how she was in her Floraville garden shortly after putting her baby down for a nap.
“The birds went quiet and then the ground began to shake,” Ingrid said of the eerie moment.
“Crockery fell out of kitchen cupboards and smashed to the ground, and I had no idea what was happening.
“Shortly after the shaking stopped, my aunt called to check on us. She was at Centrepoint Tower in Sydney and had felt the building move and the tiles beneath her feet crack. My baby slept through it all.”
While most of the devastation occurred in and around the Newcastle CBD, effects of the quake were felt up to 800km away, with 300,000 people affected.
On the 30th anniversary of the earthquake in 2019, photojournalist Steve Tickner spoke to Newcastle Weekly about his memories of the event and how his photos highlighted Novocastrians working together.
“What impressed me the most, and what is reflected in a lot of the photos, is the willingness of people to get straight in and start working on the problem,” he said.
This December marks thirty-five years since the Newcastle earthquake shook the Hunter region and beyond.
While the physical scars on the landscape are long gone, the devastating event that took 13 lives and changed countless others’ remains vivid in the minds of many as one of Australia’s worst natural disasters on record.
Story Laura Jackel
Photography Lost Newcastle Collection
