Shared Stories: Making a sea change

Making a sea change

This 1927 Ocean Beach Estate subdivision plan consciously markets a home by the beach. Refreshment rooms, dressing sheds and a public park with a creek running through it have been drawn onto the plan. The illustration idealises the landscape and the experience of being at Redhead.

The poster makes it clear that the developer is a mining company. Along the Eastern side of Lake Macquarie work in the mines, living by the beach and daytripping were linked.

By 1917 the railway line owned and operated by the Redhead Coal Company extended to Belmont, a popular lakeside resort for miners and other industrial workers. A passenger service on the line made it possible to live at Redhead and work elsewhere. Weekend trains were filled with daytrippers intent on enjoying beachside and lakeside locations.

By 1924, the same rail line carried the output of five collieries (John Darling at Belmont, Dudley, Burwood No. 3, Lambton B and Redhead) to market as well as transporting workers between settlements and the mines where they worked.

Ocean Beach Estate Redhead subdivision plan
New Redhead Estate and Coal Company Ltd
1927
Lake Macquarie City Council Local Studies Collection
Unknown donor

This work by Lake Macquarie City Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License