Nancarrow was on night shift that week, and when he heard about the plans for the pub's farewell gig he thanked his lucky stars he wasn't on nights the following week.

"I couldn't stand having to go in there with all the beer and mess that's going to be floating around," he told the reporter he was working with.

As luck would have it, his shift was changed, and the following Wednesday he was rostered on to cover the Star's last night.

Nancarrow had never been a Star regular, but like most Novocastrians at the time, he had spent one or two nights there, including an evening with his hang-gliding mates, practising crash landings by jumping off the pub's back bar.

On the night of the closure, attending the Star was just another job. Nancarrow and reporter Robyn Wade had been busy on other assignments around the Newcastle area until about 9 pm, and they didn't head to the Star until just before 10pm closing time - not expecting to encounter anything particularly unusual.

"We opted for the King Street entrance, assuming we would never get through the main door in Hunter Street," Nancarrow recalls.

The pair fluked a parking spot just opposite the pub.

"I mounted the light on the camera, threw its battery around my neck, shouldered the camera and crossed the road to commence filming.

Read more: Heroes prepare for their final show

"I had only grabbed a couple of incidental shots when the police car and paddy wagon arrived, much to the displeasure of the patrons who were starting to congregate on the footpath."

From then on, cameraman and reporter merged with the crowd and for the next couple of hours, as the riot ebbed and flowed, they were in the thick of the action.

"Weathering a shower of beer cans was a unique and unforgettable experience," Nancarrow says.

Unknown to him at the time, off-duty NBN reporter Neil Bowes had been drinking at the Star and acted as an unseen guardian angel, shadowing Nancarrow and fending off as many missiles as he could.

Even so, at one point Nancarrow did receive a passing swipe from an injured policeman who, with blood streaming down his head, objected to being filmed and lashed out at the cameraman.

The old-style TV cameras then in use were nowhere near as flexible as today's equipment. Film magazines had to be changed every 10 minutes and film had to be processed.

READ MORE:In the middle of the mayhem

"Fortunately there was a degree of ebb and flow with the conflict which enabled me to change magazines without missing any action," Nancarrow recalls.

The climax came after one ebb in the action when the crowd noticed two vacant police cars parked at the kerb. As they started rocking the cars, Nancarrow started filming, capturing the moment when the car was turned upside down.

"Hastily I grabbed a prescient shot of the fuel leaking from the petrol cap, then turned my attention back to the crowd which, now flushed with success, was attempting to do the same thing to the paddy wagon," he says.

That's when the fateful match was thrown into the leaking petrol.

"Through the lens I watched almost transfixed as a wall of flame erupted from the fuel-laden gutter."

The cars were engulfed and the rioters retreated from the fierce heat amidst a chilling crescendo of whooping and yelling.

Nancarrow captured some footage of the fi re brigade dousing the flames and hosing down the crowd.

Some water apparently affected his audio gear, and subsequent footage contains no sound.

READ MORE: The night of fighting on the streets

The Star Hotel riot was unquestionably the high point of his time in news, Nancarrow says. His footage shocked Australia, was transmitted around the world and won him a string of awards and prizes, including a Logie award.

Felicity Biggins was the Herald's rock writer at the time of the riot, so naturally knew the Star very well.

"I was there off-duty that night and I was very pissed off that the place was closing," she recalls.

"The atmosphere was peaceful and we were all having a good time until the police came. Their behaviour made everybody really angry. After they stopped the music we went out onto King Street and we saw what happened next. We went running up to the Herald office to tell them to hold the press, there was a big story breaking at the Star."

Muso Trevor Dare was a regular at the Star with his band Vambo Rules, and he still considers the Star's grand finale as "one of the best nights I ever had".

"Until the cops came and turned the amps off," Dare adds.

"It was fun. There were no brawls. And the fact was, the Star never really closed on time. It always ran on a little bit, depending on the band.

READ MORE: The riot and the myths

"I felt the police wanted trouble and there were some nutcases in the crowd who were ready to play up."

Dare admits he threw "one can" - an act that was captured on film and which made it into the film clip for Cold Chisel's Star Hotel song.

Strangely, Dare ended up playing at the revamped Star years later when it was gutted by fire.

IN OTHER NEWS: