The Wild West - the history of the Family Hotel

The Family Hotel recently opened on this site. Topics mentioned at the time that the site formerly housed the Duck’s Nuts and Silk hotels.

Winifred MacFarlane, of Adamstown Heights, told us that James Cameron built the hotel in 1885. (He’s no relation to the famous Hollywood director of the same name).

Winifred said it was called the Cardiff Arms Hotel from February 1886 to July 1890. It had also been named the Cameron Family Hotel. 

Winifred’s great great grandmother was a Cameron.

“I’ve never been inside the hotel, believe it or not,” Winifred said.

Topics offered to shout her a schooner there.

“A wine, not a schooner,” she said.

She wrote a history on the family and its links to hotels in Newcastle. Famously, the Cameron family also owned the Star Hotel. 

Winifred said the Family Hotel was one of the oldest pubs in Newcastle. 

“A lot of our history is gone and the younger generation don’t know anything about these things,” she said.

Which is why we’re lucky to have Herald history writer Mike Scanlon. 

Mike previously reported that about 50 members of the Cameron clan arrived in Sydney on the ship Brilliant in 1838.

They spoke Gaelic, not English, and many took up farming along the Hunter River at Hexham.

They were quick to make connections in Newcastle.

The Star Hotel's first owner was Ewan Cameron.

His descendants were a family “driven from their native village during Scotland's infamous Highland clearing”.

According to Cameron family historian Laurie Nilsen, “this bitter experience left them with an obsession for land”.

“Ewan Cameron later bought West End land and erected his Star Hotel with money made at the Rockhampton goldrush,” Mike’s report said.

Topics reported recently about a row of FJ Holdens parked in front of a plane.

Summerland Point’s David Lindeman subsequently told us that the aircraft in the background “appears to be Tango Victor Charlie (registration on the nose of VH-TVC)”.

“If this is the case, it is the Vickers Viscount that crashed into Botany Bay at Kurnell on November 30, 1961 during a violent thunderstorm,” he said.

“It was on a flight from Sydney to Canberra. All 15 on board died.”

Charlestown’s Frank Heap told Topics that he was at Botany Bay on the night of the crash, working in an oil refinery.

Frank, now 86, said the weather that night was terrible.

“The lightning was absolutely frightening,” he said.

Frank and his co-workers on the night shift weren’t far from the bay.

“We heard the crash,” Frank said.

“We didn’t know what it was.”

After the accident, Frank felt lucky the plane hadn’t crashed into the refinery.

Years later, Frank spoke to a bloke who worked as a Navy diver at the time of the crash.

“He told us what it was like getting the bodies out of the plane – absolutely horrific,” he said.

I told my wife she drew her eyebrows too high. She seemed surprised.