Newcastle Family History Society Podcasts

Join Benita Parker from the West Wallsend District Heritage Group as she presents another story of West Wallsend’s pioneering women through vivid first-person narration. In Part 1 of this podcast, we meet Ida Viola Bohle, who arrived in West Wallsend in 1926 as a young teacher and whose connection with the town would endure for more than seven decades.

Get a preview of our July podcasts.

Society member Sandra Boyd, takes us back to the early 1850s—to a landscape of swamp, scrub, and isolation along the banks of the Hunter River, where her family, the Bakers and others helped shape what would become the suburb of Mayfield.

Benita Parker of the West Wallsend District Heritage Group continues the story of Mary Johnston in this series exploring the lives of West Wallsend’s pioneering women. Set against a time of expanding families, new opportunities, and sweeping change, this episode follows the journey of a miner’s wife who becomes the matriarch of a bustling household as a small settlement grows into a thriving town.

Join Benita Parker from the West Wallsend District Heritage Group as she brings to life the stories of West Wallsend’s pioneering women through vivid first-person storytelling. In this episode, Benita recounts the opening chapter of the extraordinary life of Mary Johnston.

Society member, Sandra Boyd,  looks into the early lives of her ancestors, the Baker family and the world they stepped into as new arrivals in the colony of NSW.

Stephen Ticehurst explores the lives of two men named Wallis who lived in Newcastle in the early nineteenth century, revealing the contrasting human faces of the British Empire’s colonial project in the region.

In this final episode of Bushrangers in the Hunter Valley. we follow the story of the notorious Jewboy Gang and their enigmatic leader, Edward Davis, turning then to the enduring legend of Frederick Ward, aka Captain Thunderbolt and his partner, the remarkable Worimi bushranger, Mary Ann Bugg.

In this sixth and final podcast Jane Ison looks at the little-known Wesleyan Methodist Burial Ground once situated in Newcastle West.

In this episode of Notable Novocastrians, Mel Woodford explores the life of the actress, Essie Jenyns, who captured the public imagination and became an important part of Newcastle’s social history.

Join Society member Narelle Austen as she uncovers the context surrounding the events at Castle Forbes near Singleton and drawing on historical records and creative reconstruction, describes, in Part One, the beginnings of the trial of those involved in the revolt. 

Narelle Austen continues the story of those on trial for the Castle Forbes Revolt. Mr Roger Therry puts the case for the defence and two of the condemned men make a final plea for their suffering to be acknowledged.

Jane Ison looks at the first Newcastle Roman Catholic Burial Ground once situated beside Cottage Creek in Newcastle West.

Arriving as free settlers with little wealth, the Woods rose through mining, hotels and brewing to become some of the Newcastle’s richest and most influential citizens. Their money built grand houses on the Hill, funded hospitals, schools and charities, and helped shape the city's civic life.

In episode one we left Molly Morgan, Joe Hunt, Irish Frank and the Anvil Creek household awaiting the arrival of the bushranger gang, Jacob’s Irish Brigade. Drawing on historical records and creative reconstruction, this episode imagines how Jacob’s Irish Brigade may have been received by Molly Morgan - on a frontier where survival depended on knowing when to speak, and when not to.

Jane Ison looks at the Presbyterian cemetery once situated beside Cottage Creek in Newcastle West.

Across the road from The Junction Public School in Newcastle once stood a small but mighty institution — a family-run pottery that shaped a community for more than a century. Marie Hughes tells the story of Hughes Potteries – A Family Concern.

In this creative non-fiction podcast, Narelle Austen explores the people, places, and forces behind bushranging in one of Australia’s earliest colonial regions - the Hunter Valley.

Jane Ison traces the history of St Andrew’s – its foundation, its people, and the painstaking research that has helped rediscover more than a thousand names once thought forgotten.

Jan Richards traces the life of her ancestor Hannah Williams whose fate was sealed by a single decision in London in 1828.

In our series, Memories of Newcastle, society member Lea Harris takes us back to the days of the Stockton Tweed Factory, a forgotten piece of our local history.

In this episode Jane Ison takes you back to the very first graveyard in Newcastle – the burial ground at Christ Church, high on the hill where the Anglican Cathedral now stands.

Mel Woodford takes a look at some of the early landholders & the female convicts who were assigned to them.

Written by the late Maree Shilling, this podcast tells of a little-known chapter in Newcastle’s history during World War II, from the recollections of a young girl who experienced that time.

Society member Jane Ison takes us on a journey into the past, to a place thousands pass by daily without knowing what lies beneath —Rest Park in Wallsend, once the site of the town’s first cemetery.