News that a Supercars race will be held in Newcastle has sparked memories of a famous song.
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Bob Hudson’s 1975 record, titled The Newcastle Song, was a hit.
It was about a young bloke named Norm, who cruises along Hunter Street with his mates in an FJ Holden looking to pick up (harass might be a more accurate description) women.
They come across a “beautiful looking sheila” outside the Parthenon Milk Bar.
The song starts with the lyrics: “Yes, up in Newcastle they have very strange mating habits.
“All the young women of Newcastle walk down the main street, which is called Hunter Street for reasons that will become obvious later on in the song.”
The chorus goes like this: “Don't you ever let a chance go by, oh Lord, don't you ever let a chance go by”.
The song continued: “Anyway there was this mob of blokes driving down Hunter Street in the front seat of the hot FJ, with chrome-plated grease nipples and twin overhead foxtails, and the coolest of them all, who got to sit near the window, was young Norm.
“And they pulled up outside the Parthenon milk bar and standing outside the Parthenon was this beautiful looking sheila.”
Norm ends up getting in a fight with a “nine-foot tall Hell's Angel”.
We note that the route of the Supercars race doesn’t actually go down Hunter Street.
As Herald scribe Michael “Parro” Parris reported yesterday, the proposed 2.6-kilometre, anti-clockwise circuit takes in Wharf Road, Watt, King, Pacific and Telford streets, Parnell Place and a horseshoe-shaped section through Nobbys Beach Reserve. It includes new roads through the reserve and Pacific Park.
This is just not on.
As Topics reported yesterday, Deb Richards is leading a campaign on Facebook for the route to take in Hunter Street.
“Any V8 Supercar race in Newcastle has to include Hunter Street. It has traditionally been Newie's Conrod Straight. If Hunna Street's out, we're out. Mainy Magic!” Deb wrote.
As Parro reported, Newcastle Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes said this about the race: “I guarantee that consultation will be deep with the community”.
OK then. That’s good. This means we can get the route changed, doesn’t it?
We’re calling on the lord mayor to take this straight to the top. Hunter Street must be included.
Bob Hudson would surely agree.
A Mystery Solved
Topics reported yesterday that Lightning Ridge’s Kayle Hobden was reading his pop’s war diary when he came across an interesting entry.
His pop, Keith Hobden, had written more than 40 names in the diary. They were believed to be blokes with him in the Changi prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore in World War II.
One of the names was “Wansey or Warsey”, accompanied by this: “CO N.C. Morning Herald Newcastle”.
“This person must have worked for the Newcastle Morning Herald,” Kayle said.
We think we’ve solved this mystery.
John Brereton, of Bar Beach, told Topics that it was Sydney Mosman Wansey, who was born October 28, 1909 in Newcastle.
“He enlisted in Newcastle on July 4,1940 in the 2/20th Battalion as part of the 22nd Brigade and was interned at Changi after the fall of Singapore,” John said.
Belmont’s Robin Gordon said the Wansey family were well known in Newcastle.
They were proprietors of the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, she said.
“Sydney Wansey certainly served in WWll,” she said.
Robin said the Wansey family had “quite a bit of history”.
“There’s still some good Wansey family members around today,” she said.
We also found a report that control of the Herald passed to Sydney Wansey in 1961.
He was the adopted son of Hudson Berkeley, who bought a controlling stake in the newspaper in 1889.
Joke of the Day
I went on a two-week holiday to the south of France.
It was Toulon.
