It surprises most people I meet, when they find out that I do not live in one of this country's larger cities, but in the small sea-side community of Newcastle. I take it as a great compliment, mind you. And this always leads to the inevitable question, delivered with a facial expression that usually fails to hide the bemusement one holds when trying to comprehend why on Earth I would choose to live in such a place; "So, what's living in Newcastle like?"

 

And I always give the same answer, smiling pleasantly (somewhat falsely), and talking with a whimsical quality any tourism campaign would pay good money for; "The beaches are lovely!"

 

Not that this is necessarily true, as it is, in terms of what it implies. Newcastle has convinced itself that its beaches are the only reason anyone would need to throw anchor in this town, and to be honest, it convinced even me. One of its beaches, Nobby's, is certainly a postcard in action: a long, bright white shore on a peak that divides the ocean from the harbour, leading up to an old stone lighthouse. But it pales in comparison to the lighthouse beaches such as Seal's Rock, or, it must be said, the beauty of Byron Bay (however painful the actual town of Byron Bay has slowly become). The main Newcastle Beach is nothing more than a shrunken version of Bondi; Stockton beach is dirtied by the black coal that washes ashore (hence, inspiring the film about the town's less than pristine past, Black Rock); and the Merewhether/Bar Beach leg is a broken, chopped stretch of sand with inhospitable sandbanks and rips, and not a shred of aesthetic charisma. That's it, after all. That's Newcastle's beaches. I find nearly all beaches are "lovely" - these included. But they're hardly the gold this town seems to be under the impression they are.

But that's Newcastle, and the cruel irony I have always found in what should be a comfort to me - that I have none of the cultural ignorance that this town so efficiently possesses - is that this ignorance has always been just that, nonetheless... efficient. Ignorance is bliss in Newcastle, there's no other place I've been to that more deserves this catch-cry. Newcastle's people don't actually want to escape the town, and that always baffled me. But I came to realise it served a purpose (whether they realised it, or not). Thank heavens Novacastrians don't get out more - they may realise the beliefs and concepts underpinning their loyalty are somewhat delusional. They may realise they don't live in the best town in Australia, beside the loveliest beaches in the world.

What keeps Newcastle in? What are the walls of ignorance for the Novacastrian? They are psychological walls, but psychological walls that arise from an entirely cultural phenomenon. I grew up near Newcastle, and left the minute I finished school. I returned, over a decade later, expecting the town to have surely moved forward. But it hasn't. There's a trend amongst the young wealthy yuppies of the town to at least embrace "out of town" culture, to the point where they have usurped  areas of the inner-city that have been fashioned off decidedly out of town ideas (most notably, Darby Street). But they're just ideas. "Do you go to Darby Street?" I am constantly asked (though it is more a presumption than a question), because Darby Street likes to think it's Oxford Street (but the Paddington end) meets Newtown's King Street. Let me assure you it is neither. Four cafes, two over-priced clothing boutiques and a couple of take away Indians doesn't constitute such a claim, in the first place. But even the single block (a single block!) that does at least assume the aesthetic, falls with a thump from the thing it aspires to be, when you sit down long enough and realise that sipping latte alongside you in the cafes are simply hicks dressed in imported sneakers and wearing ridiculous designer sunglasses. They waltz around talking on their latest Nokias as if they're very much City People On The Go™, etc, etc, but listen to the actual conversations they're having on their latest Nokia, and they're really just run of the mill Novocastrians who have posed in a manner that has deluded themselves and each other, giving them a sense of cultural righteousness they don't actually warrant.

Somewhere along the way, Newcastle was left behind - why or how, I'm not entirely sure. But what I can tell you from my own experiences here is that this point created a cultural evolution in Newcastle (or "stagnancy" is probably a better word to use) that maintained this cultural distance, even as other small cities such as Wollongong began to catch up. Newcastle could let culture in, now - something the internet and the modern media have led to in many places (breaking down cultural walls that were previously maintained by a culture's ability to to be removed from the rest of the world) - but it refuses. It actually rejects it. It despises Sydney (partly because it presumes Sydney thinks it is "better" - which, quite naturally and with great validity, it does), and has raised generations upon generations to successfully fear the outside world. My parents blamed my rejection of the town and my running into the wider world for all the things they thought "wrong" with me, and in response to my "failure", made an overbearing effort to make sure my younger brother did not betray his origins (for, as they saw it, the sake of his future). They are the perfect example of Novacastrian ideology. When you drive into the city, you pass a billboard advertising the local bank, The Newcastle Permanent, that to me, has always said it all. The bank divised a rather clever marketing plan (as someone who works in the Newcastle marketing industry, I know full well that any solid advertising in this place must firstly appeal to the town's great love of itself), where 50 ads were designed that each stated a reason why you'd rather live in Newcastle than anywhere else on Earth. This particular billboard is reason number 39, and it says, so simply, "It 'aint Sydney".

Oh, thank heavens for that! Because, you know, in comparison, Sydney is a place that celebrates diversity, and gender equality and respect, and intellect, and isn't homophobic or violent or blatantly racist, and is full of hippies (which, in Newcastle, is nothing more than someone with a university degree), and, you know, there's opportunities, and stuff. Thank God we don't live there!! How awful that must be! I mean, they have traffic jams, there. In Newcastle, the streets flow free.

Because they're mostly empty, of course, and there's not really anywhere to go.

Two weeks ago, however, the postcard began to crack. Newcastle likes to put itself forward to the rest of the country (which it doesn't get the chance to, very often) as the home of golden haired surfers; but it is also the home of a large ratio (for the population) of bikies. Newcastle is where most of the speed in NSW comes from, and like any small biker town of old, these bikies are well and truly above the law. Recently, when a stream of bikies rolled through the town, the police formed a procession to protect them. In Maitland, the local bikie gang once burned all the local public toilets to protect the town from roaming homosexuals, and the police never so much as fluttered an eyelid (quite a few of the police, as is particularly the case in smaller areas, are “on the take”), the town actually grateful. The bikies do their little teddy bear run every year, giving stuffed toys to sick children in hospitals, and everybody smiles warmly at those lovable huggable bikies. Those lovable huggable bikies are murderous thugs who have hooked any young person they can on the thing the bikies industry produces… speed. Aaaawwww, God bless ‘em.

It was always a problem, but the problem has now become much worse with the evolution of speed, and its replacement by its much more dangerous distant cousin, "Ice" (known in the other countries it has ruined, such as the US and Canada, as Crystal Meth). I'm the first to roll my eyes and shoot down the annual (generally, pre-election) drugs scare - "Ecstasy is killing our children" (it isn't, really, its abuse is just leading to depression - alcohol and drink-driving is killing them the most), "Pot is leading to violence" (it doesn't, it leads to being exceedingly dull and anxious), etc, etc. But the problem about the Ice scare is not only that this time it's quite right - if anything, I believe we are underestimating it. We are certainly underestimating where it's going to end up, because this is really just the beginning, the tip of an iceberg that will slowly rip a giant hole in our ship. We're going to have a larger discussion very soon about Ice (it deserves a separate article, and I've actually had a personal experience of Ice, many years ago, when it first reached the streets and was mistakenly seen as a designer club drug), but suffice to say, I cannot stress enough how absolutely fatal this drug is (not just on a personal level, but on a social level - this is going to affect all of us). And where do you think most of the Ice is coming from?

Vroom, vroom. Uh-oh, Newcastle.

And let me assure you, Ice junkies make Heroin junkies seem.... well.... lovable and huggable. The smack addict has their rationale corrupted by an immense and destructive addiction, but in all fairness, the very nature of heroin and the way in which it destroys an individual, actually plays against a violent nature. The crime of smack is largely contained to robberies involved in the user's desperate attempt to financially appease the addiction, and certainly violence can be a part of that. But aside from the nature of junkie crime in the basic specifics (robbery) that, yes, is the same in the Ice phenomenon, unlike Heroin, the very nature of the actual drug itself  (and the way in which it destroys the Ice addict) puts the junkie in a very different league. Ice is a violent drug that gives people an inflated sense of energy, invincibility and aggression. The more a smack addict sinks into withdraw, they become undermined by the way they simply start to fall apart physically. An Ice junkie becomes increasingly dangerous - beyond simply having a need remove morality, the drug actually creates extreme violent tendencies and paranoid psychosis. Combine those aspects, and kaboom. You get the picture.

As Ice has slowly taken off in the community, crime rates have risen (further) and admittance to psychiatric institutions have increased (in a town that has the highest instances of mental disorders in the country). And it's not just Ice addicts robbing people to score their next hit - it's seemingly normal club kids simply flipping out on a night out, and even more surprising to many (but not to anyone who understands the coke phenomenon of this realm), by the small portion of the corporate world which has taken to the drug as a designer luxury and a psychological aid to climbing the tough corporate ladder (my, how they're falling when, in the end, they lose the game). Ice, unlike heroin, is everywhere, its tentacles reaching into a cross-section of the community. Sure, it's mostly the lower-class tracksuit wearing Jerry Springer audience types, like heroin (and many ex heroin addicts have now given the drug up to become Ice addicts), but it's very wrong to point the finger squarely at this cliche, without acknowledging that even though it is essentially a lower class epedemic, it is reaching beyond; and not only are others taking Ice, they're eligible for committing the same crimes (particularly because even though many crimes come from theft to pay for the addiction, Ice crime can also be simply a matter of drug-induced psychosis). In the most horrible way, Ice can actually break down cultural and social boundaries. The Ice addict in the Centrelink line having a paranoid psychosis is just as deadly as the guy in the Armani suit having one. I'm all for social unity, but not this kind.

Slowly, Ice has poisoned Newcastle, and there are violent crimes from one end of the city to the other, now rocking the most seemingly picturesque suburbs and parts of the city; but it has been building here for a good three years. While completing my writing honors at Newcastle University, I was the poor uni student living in the roughest (cheapest) suburbs of Newcastle - Mayfield and Islington. This is the red light district and the lowest socio-economic area of inner Newcastle. It is also where the bikie headquarters is, in a guarded building that has real bullet holes on the steel doors. As you can imagine, I got to witness Ice first arriving on the streets of Newcastle, and what was once a cautious walk to the 24 hour service station past smacked out prostitutes and young boys in baseball caps who would slur requests for spare change, quickly became a dangerous affair where it was in no way out of the ordinary to see violent crimes happening right before your eyes. They weren't asking for the change anymore, let's put it that way.

After uni, I started my own business and moved into the expensive and tres fashionable Eastern end of the city (a block from the beaches), and for a while, I forgot all about the Ice epidemic that was slowly beginning to seep through Newcastle. I had warned everyone that they were witnessing the start of something that would one day become impossible to ignore for this city (everyone thought I was exaggerating, of course), but I had moved so far from where this was beginning, I eventually never gave it another thought. My attention was drawn back to the other problem in this town - one that has been here almost forever, but one that is only recently beginning to get some bad press - binge drinking packs of men (in this town, boys associate with other boys, girls associate with other girls, and the only time the two tend to intertwine is when one has successfully "scored" the other in a drunken libidinal drama in a local pub). Living in the inner city pub and club district, it was this that now caught my attention and worried me the most. Friday and Saturday nights outside my bedroom window are unpleasant to lay awake and listen to, I assure you. The good old Newy lads, blind drunk and reduced to the simplest cognitions and desires, stumble their way along the street in groups, smashing car windows and shop signs, fighting one another over girls, accusing each other of being "faggots" (more fights then ensue to see who is the straightest) and singing misogynistic football themes. The Newcastle girls catfight one another over these horrible men, or burst into tears because some "slut" has picked up the bastard she was hoping to. And every five minutes, someone throws up in the gutter. As I said, it's an unpleasant pastiche. But that's Newcastle for you.

But Ice has now hit the inner-city, and between the drunken Newcastle boofheads and the Ice addicts (and another cultural symptom of class divison that we will discuss, a little later), this picturesque sea-side city, I must confess, has become downright inhospitable. I'm leaving. Done. Ciao, Newcastle, you're actually quite a horrible place, and when I finally return to Sydney, I will no doubt sigh with relief, and say something along the lines of... oh, I don't know... "It 'aint Newcastle!" I look foward to this moment, I must say. I will leave this town gripped by fear, and worse, a fear it will be unable to resolve. The recent crimes are terrible, but so is the witch-hunt that is brewing. We always laugh, here at this website, about how this country has gone mad - and it has - but Newcastle wins the gold medal in the social insanity stakes. And it's just going to get worse. An increasing wave of crime has smeared blood across the postcard, and it's never going to be anywhere near as pretty, ever again.

It started three weeks ago. The papers had been alarming us for some time, by drawing our attention to the increasing rates of theft and assault (a higher assault rate than Kings Cross and Campbelltown), but nothing quite makes the extent of what is happening quite as clear as when people start to die violent deaths, one after another, only a few days apart (and worse, not even deaths at the hands of the same perpetrators). In two weeks, three violent murders have occured - two only a stone's throw away from each other in one of the most expensive suburbs of the inner-city (amidst leafy, quiet streets).

Though it would be the murder that would happen only ten days later that would become the most gruesome and frightening, it was the initial death of Lillie Wood, 88 years of age and well known in Newcastle, that rocked the town (on March 2nd). I must also say that personally, while there is no disputing the horror of what was to follow, it is Wood's death that I find most difficult to shake from my mind - and this is solely because we have a rather complex narrative around the murder, and one so cruelly tainted with such horribly bad luck.

It began when Lillie lost her purse. It was "found" in the local Civic Park, and returned to her home address (included inside the purse). One can imagine that Lillie was at first relieved to open her door and find someone standing there with her lost property, but it would quickly turn to fear. Whoever this person was, they asked Lillie for some token of reward for their model citizen behaviour. Upon realising that the contents of the purse had been taken (the story was that the individual had reported to have found the purse in this state, but this now seems as if it should be taken with a grain of salt), Lillie informed them that she now had no reward to offer.

The nature of the exchange to follow is unclear, but it left Lillie with the distinct impression that this person would return to collect the reward they felt they deserved. We know this, because Lillie eventually turned to her neighbour to ask if she could borrow some money for this purpose. When the neighbour declined, Lillie explained that if she did not have the money for them, she would be hurt. The neighbour still declined. Yes, that's right - how does that neighbour feel now, I wonder? In the city of mateship, itself, might I add!

Because whoever it was did come back, and did a little more than simply "hurt" her. She was bashed and left dead in her own doorway.

Nine days later, a 37 year old man made the somewhat unfortunate mistake of being drawn to Newcastle's infamous Nobby's beach, in the early weekend hours of the morning. This is when Newcastle's thugs come out to play, in their best chambres - the reason why on Friday and Saturday nights, we make sure we've purchased enough food and cigarettes before sundown. He was attacked in the carpark, overlooking the beach, and bashed with a bottle. He died later, in hospital.

By now, Newcastle was in a spin. With one of what looked like could very well be an Ice-related crime, and one that looked like yet another weekend attack gone too far, the postcard was in flames, and local press all echoed the same sentiment: something was going very wrong in paradise. But it wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

Two days later, came the shocking death of Frank Newberry. Frank was an 87 year old war veteran (yes, so you can imagine) who had run the last true blue old-fashioned grocery store in town - a store he had run for a whopping 56 years. In other words, Frank was the real deal. Every facet of Frank's story was so utterly "perfect", it seemed to leap out of a crime novel that wished to elicit the most horror possible from the callous murdering of the person you'd least be able to imagine killing. Frank had settled in Newcastle after the war, using the money he had saved to buy the store outright and make a life with his new wife. He went to the shop door, every afternoon, to wave at the children as they rode past in the school buss. He had a special method of counting out the change, with scrupulous care, into his customers' hands. There are countless tales of how he nursed his sick wife to her death, and vowed to keep the store (and their dream) alive, after she succumbed to her fatal illness. She would sit in the corner of the store, chair-bound, and watch her beautiful Frank serve at the counter - locals say she did this right to her very passing. In 2001, the town named him "Best Grocer In The World". Yes, he was another Newcastle institution, a dear part of their deep belief that they live in the very best place on Earth.

So wonderful is this place, on March 12, in the middle of the day, someone walked into Frank's store and beat him to his death. They left him, unconscious and lying in a pool of his own blood, covered with a cardboard box. Frank Newberry had the perfect Aussie life in the city of beaches. But how horribly it ended.

And it is the symbolism of Frank Newberry that is so emotionally charged; and while three murders in two weeks would still cause that uproar, the amplitude of this current noise is all the greater for the sheer narrative that was the brutal killing of Newcastle's beloved grocer. To be perfectly honest, even the local press have stopped mentioning the poor 37 year old guy who was beaten to death beside the beach. They use it to give the full impact of the death total ("3 deaths in two weeks!" the papers remind us), but that's as far as it goes. He didn't seem particularly special, he wasn't the world's best anything, and there's no narrative to grab hold of. He went to the beach and somebody jumped him, on the weekend, in the middle of the night. I can't even tell you his name. But Lillie Wood and Frank Newberry have become the stuff of Newcastle legend - a horrible legend, forever marking the moment where the city of beaches became the last place on Earth you'd want to be in. The local paper went as far as having a Frank Newberry memorial special (I kid you not) that featured pages and pages of horrid details and angry, mourning locals having their bitch about Newcastle's decay, and remembering the world's best grocer.