"Wish you were here" was a commonly scribbled message on the back of idyllic scenes of picture postcards first sent by mail more than a century ago.

Today they have fallen out of favour, except usually as souvenirs in popular seaside tourist hotspots. They have been rendered obsolete by text and instant photos on personal devices.

"Mobile phones have today replaced them. Postcards are a style of communication no longer here," Angie Weston tells Weekender during a recent visit to Newcastle Regional Library.

We're standing in the Lovett Gallery on an upper floor next to the library's local studies section surveying literally hundreds of images, both big and small, at a recently opened exhibition of old Newcastle frozen in time.

Accompanying the quaint - but often revealing - postcard images, most with messages scribbled on the back, are scores of fascinating extended city portraits of a Newcastle people are unlikely to easily recognise.

These glimpses into the past, at the exhibition Postcards and Panoramas, has been prepared by library staff to give Novocastrians an insight into their city in landscapes, both in black and white and tinted tones.

The first Australian postcard was issued in NSW in 1875, but it wasn't until November 1898 that the NSW post office introduced pictorial postcards featuring scenic views.

Someone's address and a very brief message could be written on the back with just enough space for a postage stamp.

It was a quick, inexpensive way, to stay in touch. The downside was the lack of privacy for both sender and recipient.

Despite this, picture postcards became a very popular way to communicate in 20^th century Australia. And now, these postcards, from the library's collection, have become in their own way, priceless mini-historical documents along with its panoramas of Newcastle and Lake Macquarie.

Angie Weston, the heritage collections librarian, said the exhibition had been planned since 2019. Originally it was to open during history week in September 2020, but COVID-19 halted all plans.

"I think visitors will find the display very interesting. It's also a social history. We looked at what we had in our collections and played to our strengths," she says.

On first entering the exhibition, the viewer's eye is immediately drawn to two long city comparison pictures, compiled by fellow librarians Sue Ryan and Chloe O'Reilly. The first panorama dates from 1905 and the second only from August 2021.

"The modern picture shows excavation around the DJ's city development site and the city's public carpark off King Street which is to be demolished," Weston says.

"In 10 years, this panorama will itself be a valuable historic document. Our cityscape is changing all over again, and it's all recorded here."

Weston says the exhibition covers a great variety, from 19^th century Newcastle harbour to our early parks and beach scenes. Also featured is a panorama from 1920 when the then Prince of Wales visited Toronto, and scenes of a growing Newcastle steelworks.

The most eye-catching feature of the display, however, is a central, circular exhibit with an enlarged streetscape panorama in colour on the outside of 1820 Newcastle, by engineer/artist Edward Close. Inside it features a 360-degree black and white panorama of Newcastle, circa 1912, provided by Greg and Sylvia Ray.

Taken from the top of the former Wood Street brewery (now part of Hamilton's TAFE), the enlarged images are from nine glass plate negatives.

Seamlessly stitched together, they give the viewer an extraordinary, uninterrupted view from distant Nobbys and the defunct Bullock Island bridge, across Cooks Hill to The Junction, Merewether and beyond to Adamstown.

Some pictures show hidden secrets.

"For example, one very old interior picture of a [Coalfield] hospital's male ward with decorative 'flowers' hanging above beds might seem romantic, but they're probably herbs, to keep the air fresh," Weston says.

"And on the far wall in the main room is another daytime city panorama by pioneer artist Edward Close, this time done in 1821 showing a windmill (on the Obelisk site) with painted natives performing a corroboree below.

"But that's not the real story, although you might think this painting is an historic record. The Aboriginals are only there to fill up the foreground. Look closer, beneath the dancers - this is where Close himself has written in ink that the scene is artistic licence because corroborees were never performed in daytime."

The great American humourist Mark Twain said it all. He once described Australia's history as not reading like the truth, "but like the most beautiful lies."

That sums up the latest effort by prolific author Jim Haynes, entitled Great Furphies of Australian History. Having written and compiled 29 books, he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for services to the performing arts as an entertainer, writer, broadcaster and historian in 2016.

His new book doesn't disappoint. Very engaging, entertaining and informative, Furphies lifts the lid on the nation's myths and folklore with great gusto.

Who would imagine that the Ashes have nothing to do with cricket and that Edward Hargraves of 'Noraville' fame on the Central Coast lied about discovering gold in NSW? Or at least, that's what Jim Haynes tells us after fossicking around in our past to uncover many similar odd and quirky Aussie yarns.

He tackles the tale of our unofficial national anthem by 'Banjo' Paterson, stating it was once a different Waltzing Matilda to the one we sing today. He also exposes Ned Kelly, not as a rebel fighting for the underdog, but as a thief, thug and murderer.

Haynes also goes in hard to demolish myths around Captain James Cook "discovering" our Great South Land. He believes Portuguese and Spanish explorers probably found the east coast of Australia long before the British mariner in 1770.

I particularly liked his debunking of the naming of our iconic train 'The Ghan' running from Adelaide to Darwin as having nothing to do with being named after Afghan cameleers. Instead, Haynes submits the case for it really being an early derogatory staff joke at their railway commissioner's expense. His name was George Gahan (pronounced "garn").

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