The most pressing problem for the town's citizens was the mammoth East End sand drift that had existed from at least 1840, gradually getting worse over 20 years previously.

This vista of sand dunes (see main picture) eventually stretched roughly from Parnell Place, below Fort Scratchley to Pacific Street, near the present Newcastle Customs House hotel.

Then 30 years later, in the 1870s, encroaching sands from today's Bar Beach created a second, similar major headache. Drifting sands had made an annoying pincer movement, reaching Cooks Hill and The Junction. But more about how this was solved a little later.

Back now to the 1840s, when the city's East End was under siege. Halting the march of this enormous desert was a nightmare with no rapid solution in sight.

The township of Newcastle was a busy maritime centre in the 1840s with an increasing coal trade. Years later it was not unusual to see up to 60 sailing ships in port, and it would have been very embarrassing by then to have the town's early main street - Watt Street - impassable because of the advancing sand dunes.

A finger of sand had even slipped down Hunter Street, piling high by 1849 outside the old post office. Enough was enough.

Even the address of people living in Newcastle East said it all. The locality was once even known as The Sandhills. Residents here laid wooden planks to cross the sand to get to work. But even by 1876 complaints continued that their planks were being buried by fresh sand.

The mounting drifts, which changed in shape and size with the wind, even built up against the last wall of the 50-year-old convict stockade (the Customs House site) causing it to collapse in 1864.

For more than 30 years the sand problem continued, until people realised the smothered earth there was also a wasted real estate opportunity. Workers wanted to live in houses close to their work in port and merchants wanted somewhere convenient to erect warehouses.

Much of the East End land was owned by the Lambton Coal Mining Company, which decided in 1874 to stabilise the area by first levelling the nuisance dunes. This was followed by spreading chitter from its mine, gradually changing the topography from a notorious "no-man's land' to an enviable place to live.

Within two years, the first buildings appeared and, within a decade, substantial "villa" residences erected.

Homeowners had clawed back property from this black Sahara. But from examining historic photographs today, it took another 20 years to conquer the sand menace and fully realise the potential of the city's East End.

But did Novocastrians have only themselves to blame for the original mess they got themselves into? The answer is probably yes.

An 1853 sketch of Newcastle (see artwork) clearly shows the grand sand divide between inner-city cottages and Signal Hill (Fort Scratchley). At top right of the etching is the dilapidated two-storey East End jail from 1818, better known to the cynical locals as "Castle Rackrent". Although deteriorating, it was still being used in 1851 used to house a remaining convict gang working to repair the storm-damaged breakwater at Nobbys.

To deter escaping felons, it had long been a policy of colonial prison officials to burn all the vegetation around the later crumbling four-metre high jail walls. There were soon no bushes or ti-trees nearby to hide behind. But no one thought of any consequence, such as future erosion and massive sand drifts.

But now, another mystery. Why Is the East End's Zaara (or Zara) street so named? No one seems to know for sure. Some people suggest it might have been the name of an engineer working at the long demolished landmark Zaara Street power station. However, it was only erected in 1915 and the name Zaara appears on documents in 1885.

The late Newcastle historian Dr John Turner once told me the name Zaara might be just a nickname, or corrupted verbal shorthand for Sahara, the vast Sahara Desert in North Africa. And I'd say that's as good a guess as any.

But now back to the ongoing 1870s saga of the stealthy march of beach sand along Lake Road (today's Darby Street) into Cooks Hill.

Another late, great Newcastle historian was Norm Barney, who reported that by 1878 sand drifts clogging this road had reached Parry Street and "homes were threatened with burial".

Newcastle Borough council then decided to build a fence on the eastern side of Lake Road. At one time there were five fences in the area, one on top of the other. And the sand drifts kept coming.

Most of the affected land then belonged to the Australian Agricultural Company (A.A.Coy) and the Merewether Estate.

Barney reported that by 1881 the sand had invaded Laman Street and Corlette Street and to Kemp Street near Melville (Union) Street.

The council suggested the NSW Government resume the land and use the sand to reclaim the land known as the Melville Street swamps. This meant shifting more than 88,000 cubic metres of sand and acquiring 36ha of privately held land.

That didn't happen, but sand was later used to reclaim the swamp, turning it into (National Park) playing fields.

Barney said it took the government 15 years to move on the problem, even requiring a specific act of parliament in 1886.

The government provided funds to secure the beach area and by 1889, more than 100 trees, grasses and shrubs were planted in a bid to halt the moving sand mass.

Gradually man overcame nature. But it would still take decades to tame the sand completely.

The old A.A.Coy pit tops and railway lines gradually vanished as city mining wound down. The company then decided to exploit its now unwanted land north of Glebe Road for a big residential sub-division.

The Bar Beach area had been a huge sand hill and a large part of it was carted away in the 1920s and 1930s. This was used to reclaim flood-prone and swampy land to create the new model suburb of Garden Suburb (Hamilton South), plus developing suburbs at Bar Beach and The Junction.

How this occurred was a tremendous achievement mostly using men with picks, shovels, a narrow-gauge tramway, horse teams and skips.

It was one of the most extensive civil engineering challenges in Newcastle history. Work began in 1915 and continued for about 18 years.

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