No two jobs are the same for Caves Beach artist Daniel Joyce.
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One minute he's airbrush-painting a beachside mural, the next he's pencil-drawing a family portrait and then he finds himself painting a giant pair of ugg boots.
The five-metre tall boots are outside Mortels Sheepskin Factory at Thornton.
"They're actually cyclone proof. They were installed just before a big storm several years ago. They wobbled a bit but lasted the cyclonic-type wind," Daniel said.
"They're a fibreglass shell with a wire-mesh frame. I looked inside and they're hollow."
The artwork is about "how mother nature has the final say".
"Final Say is what [business owner] Stephanie Mortel liked as the title for the piece," Daniel said.
It's about climate change and the Australian life of fire and flood.
The art features elements of the Maitland floods, drought, bushfire, a storm and tsunami.
Before he created the artwork, Daniel stood on a main angle from the highway and visualised a "giant wave on one side, where people can stand up against it, like they're inside the wave".
"Mortels is Australian through and through - it's good to get behind that," he said.
We put it to Daniel that there could be a market for this kind of artwork on real ugg boots.
"Funny you say that. Years ago I used to custom paint ugg boots in their shop for customers," he said.
"I'd paint skulls and dreamcatchers and all kinds. I even painted portraits on ugg boots. People were spending $200 on ugg boots, then doubling it on a custom-painted pair.
"I'd put a sealer over the boots, like a Scotchgard, then fine airbrush it. It was totally paintable."
Keith's Kitchen
We've been writing about whether the famous Newcastle hamburger place Keith's Kitchen was in Pacific Street or Hunter Street back in the 1950s.
Most readers believe it was in Pacific Street, but one reader remembered there being two Keith's Kitchens - with one also in Hunter Street near Civic Theatre.
Readers also told us that Joe and Thora Wellings operated Keith's Kitchen in Pacific Street.
Brian Richards, of Speers Point, said he met Joe and Thora 65 years ago.
"My mum worked for them for about 20 years. Joe became a mentor to me. He was very good to me and my late wife. He was a really nice bloke," Brian said.
When Brian and his mum first met Joe, Brian was about 12. Later, when he was around 16 or 17, he worked with Joe on an old building in Pacific Street.
"He used to pick me up and we'd do all the maintenance that had to be done on the joint - it was falling to pieces.
"There were some units on top. We went through and done them up, one by one."
When they finished working at night, they'd go for a drink in the Albion pub at Wickham.
Reg Date, who ran the pub, was a famous Newcastle soccer player. He was dubbed "the Don Bradman of Football".
"When we finished of a night, we'd go to Reggie Date's pub and have a drink. I met a few of the local identities there," he said.
Brian, now 77, got married at a young age.
He and his wife didn't have much money, so Joe let them spend their honeymoon at his fishing shack on the lake at Paroo Avenue at Eleebana.
"Beautiful spot. You couldn't have got a better spot if you went to a 16-star hotel," he quipped.
Joe also bought Brian a car, telling him to "just pay me what you can when you can".
"I made sure I paid it back very quickly for him," he said.
He was a well liked bloke around the town. He was president of Adamstown Bowling Club for a long time.
He always got on well with everyone.
"My parents went out on his yacht nearly every weekend," he said.
And what about those hamburgers at Keith's Kitchen?
"They were the best in the world," he said.
"When I was a little bloke, my mum used to bring me home a hamburger of a night. I'd lay in bed awake. As soon as that door opened at about midnight, I'd go and get the best hamburger ever."
- topics@newcastleherald.com.au
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