And it is not just the big ships carrying products across the globe that glide across the harbour's surface in the dark hours. The smallest of craft are out there, transporting their occupants into the new day.

Alaine Morris is one of those often on the water before the sun rises.

She is a member of the Newcastle Outrigger Canoe Club, a group of about 90 paddlers. The club's home is a shipping container and a slice of dirt beside Throsby Creek on the Carrington shore, just to the north of the Cowper Street bridge.

An assortment of water sports groups is sprinkled along this shoreline, including Newcastle Rowing Club.

From the outrigger canoe club's modest base, Alaine Morris can paddle upstream along Throsby Creek or under the bridge, where the creek blooms into the harbour. On this morning, she chooses to go where the water blooms.

"You come out here and it's another world," Ms Morris says, as she sets off in her one-person outrigger canoe.

For Alaine Morris, an early morning paddle on the harbour is about more than exercise; it's life affirming.

About two years ago, Ms Morris was recovering from breast cancer when she was walking along the foreshore and noticed the outrigger canoes. .

"I saw them coming along the harbour and thought, 'I want to get in one of those'," she recalls.

"I jumped in the boat and I've never got out.

"It changed my life. I had found something else."

That "something else" has taken her somewhere else, beyond her cancer journey, into competitions and regattas, out into the open sea, and all around the harbour.

As she slices across the water towards the port mark sitting off Queens Wharf Hotel, a paddle of about 1.25 kilometres from Carrington, Ms Morris marvels at the vessels on the water.

Ahead, sliding around Nobbys and made molten by the sun rising from the sea, is a large bulk carrier entering the port.

"It's fantastic, because you see all these different vessels coming in and out of the harbour," Ms Morris says.

And each journey, she says, contains new observations, new wonders and new lessons about the ways of water and the weather.

But, above all, outrigger canoe paddling has allowed her to embrace life, through all its peaks and troughs.

"It feels like I'm living my life, rather than just going through the motions," Ms Morris says. "It's something I can't imagine being without now."

NO sooner have you passed under the Cowper Street bridge than the relaxed air of sports clubs along the Carrington shore is left behind and the harbour gets down to business.

This is what is known as the Marine Services Precinct.

Guarding the northern end of the precinct is the local office and boat of the water police, along with other government agencies, including Maritime. Just beyond those bases is the vast yard where vessels were once built, and have been repaired for decades.

In 1957, local boat builder John (Jack) Laverick and his family implanted their skills and dreams on this site by the harbour, establishing Carrington Slipways.

"I was an apprentice to my old man, as a boatbuilder and shipwright," said Don Laverick, who would go on to become general manager of Carrington Slipways.

Don Laverick recalled his father phoning and telling him about an opportunity to buy the lease on an old slipway at Carrington and agreed to have a look with him.

"It was all that was available," Don Laverick said. "We'd been in there on occasion for repairs."

The deal was signed, and a new chapter in Newcastle maritime history was written.

What grew on the Carrington site was a company that built vessels that would voyage far beyond the harbour, constructing everything from tugs and ferries to a seismic research ship.

"The biggest one we built there was an oil rig supply vessel," Mr Laverick said. "We built 20 of those over the years."

Completed ships would slide down the slipway, creating a swell of water and excitement, as they touched the harbour.

"It was a wonderful time," recalls Don Laverick. "We built over 100 ships between Carrington and Tomago."

The family company moved upriver to Tomago in the 1970s, but maritime work continued at Carrington, including with the Forgacs Group.

For many years, the Carrington yard's most prominent feature was the floating dock, Muloobinba, before it was towed out of the harbour, destined for Africa in 2012.

Suddenly that section of the harbour seemed so much wider, yet so empty. A huge part of the city's industrial heritage and character had disappeared over the horizon.

As retired seafarer and Wickham boy Tom Jones recalled, "The floating dock was a hive of activity. You always had a ship in there getting repaired."

The Muloobinba may be gone, but ship repair and maintenance still ring and clang along Carrington's shore. The site is now operated by Thales Australia, part of the French multinational group that works in a range of industries from aerospace and defence to maritime.

In its Carrington base, Thales mostly does Department of Defence-related work, according to the company's regional production manager, Greg Gocher.

"Eighty per cent of what we do up here is related to a Defence contract, and the other 20 per cent is commercial repair and sustainment," Mr Gocher explains.

With work already being done on and for naval vessels here, it raises the question of Newcastle's suitability as a submarine base. Earlier this year, it was reported the city was one of three along Australia's east coast shortlisted to host a new nuclear submarine base.

Greg Gocher won't comment on Newcastle's suitability to host that base. However, he believes the harbour's future in the maritime industry can be found in its past.

"I think we need to go back to what we used to do many years ago," Mr Gocher says.

"We did quite well in the Newcastle and Hunter region, with ship repair and slipways. We built a lot of vessels in Newcastle. It has historically been ... a backyard for building platforms, vessels.

"We need to look in our own backyard before we go offshore to make stuff. Let's make Australian-made again."

Greg Gocher doesn't imagine one part of the past - a floating dock - will sit in the harbour again, as part of that reinvigoration of the maritime industry

"I don't think we'll ever get back to the days of the floating dock, given the landscape and infrastructure that's growing fairly quickly across Newcastle, with the high-rises and that sort of stuff."

However, he sees "the underutilised waterfront space" and the opportunities just waiting to be tapped, including the tract of land along Denison Street, next to his company's site.

So what is at the southern end of the so-called "Marine Services Precinct" is vacant land, holding the memory of ships being built and repaired.

"There's a massive block of land there that needs further investment, further development, further interest before you can genuinely call it a maritime precinct," says Greg Gocher.

The Thales manager sees the promise of a Marine Services Precinct. Even now, customers come to Newcastle and say to him, "I didn't realise this was here. I'll be back". However, others who own large vessels are lost to Newcastle, because they can't find the same standard of berthing as they would in Brisbane, Sydney or in many other places around the globe.

"It needs to be world class. We're not quite there yet," Mr Gocher says, but adds his belief that Newcastle could be.

"Absolutely. Denison Street lends itself to a superyacht centre every day of the week. Just find a funding partner and get on with it."

Not that he is suggesting Thales wants to develop a superyacht centre, but he believes the land and water along that stretch mean there is the potential "to lift, berth, moor, maintain vessels, no problem at all".

Greg Gocher believes Newcastle can imprint itself deeper on the maritime map.

"It's a great landscape, and that's been proven by bringing events like the V8 Supercars along," he says. "It's putting Newcastle on the map in that context in that sport, but then we can do the same thing in business, in the maritime space."

OUT the front of the Thales yard is something that looks like God's waiting room for ships.

The company provides what Greg Gocher describes as a "favourable berthing arrangement" for people using and restoring the vessels, so he assures it's not somewhere for ships to go to die.

"Definitely not a graveyard," Mr Gocher says. "We're helping organisations of many different descriptions ply their trade or apply their passion."

Among the fleet snoozing at the wharf lately have been decommissioned Royal Australian Navy ships, a retired Sydney harbour ferry built in Newcastle, and an old New Zealand Navy vessel, which has been renamed the Ocean Recovery and is involved in environmental and maritime archaeological work in the Pacific.

Yet perhaps the most striking vessel berthed at Carrington is the camouflage-hulled ship with the skull tattooed on its superstructure, the Steve Irwin.

More than having a fearsome look and bearing the name of an Australian legend, this ship is somewhat of an icon. It belonged to the environmental group Sea Shepherd.

For more than a decade, the ship spearheaded the organisation's campaigns on the high seas and through even higher tension, including taking on Japanese whalers near Antarctica.

After the Steve Irwin was retired in 2018 and seemed destined for a scrapheap in Hong Kong, Melbourne maritime enthusiast Kerrie Goodall stepped in and bought it - for $10.

"It was $10, but I've spent about $300,000 on it," Ms Goodall explains.

She bought the former Sea Shepherd flagship to give it a new life as an events venue and museum.

After opening the ship to the public in Melbourne, Ms Goodall was moving the Steve Irwin to Brisbane. Only floods there sank that plan. Then she intended to take the ship to Yamba on the NSW far north coast, only for floods there to scuttle Plan B.

Finally, in May, she found a port to enter - Newcastle.

"It's a long and roundabout way of being in Newcastle," she says.

Eventually, the Steve Irwin may end up in Brisbane, but for now, the ship and its owner, who lives aboard, have found friendly waters. And Ms Goodall figures Novocastrians can relate to what the ship used to do.

"People in Newcastle love the beach, they love the environment," she says. "And I love Carrington. What a great little town."

The Steve Irwin, which is on the Australian Register of Historic Vessels, will be sharing its story in Newcastle harbour, with Kerrie Goodall planning a series of public events for September, as part of her Ship4good project..

Ms Goodall says many museum ships gained their reputation from being involved in wars, and, in a way, so has the Steve Irwin.

"The Steve Irwin has a connection to war, an ecological war, which is really the war of our lifetime," she says.

THE harbour water sloshing against the southern edge of Carrington may have been a flood-infused brown of late, but from where he sits, Marcos de Oliveira is seeing orange.

Marcos de Oliveira works for Juice Terminals, a company associated with a Brazilian corporation called Citrosuco, which cultivates, produces and exports, in its own ships, orange juice concentrate.

Citrosuco has five shipping terminals around the globe, and one of those is at the tip of The Basin's western side.

Not that many people know what that line of white tanks in the shadow of the grain silos over at Carrington actually hold.

"We've been here for 18 years now and no one knows about it," says Mr de Oliveira, who is the terminal manager. "We are so small compared to the big silos in front of us that we would go unnoticed."

People may not know what is in those tanks, but chances are they have drunk what is in them.

According to Mr de Oliveira, between 60 and 70 per cent of the imported orange juice consumed in Australia each year passes through those tanks.

So Newcastle may be renowned as a coal port but it is also an orange juice hub.

"When you tell that to people, they won't believe that," Mr de Oliveira says.

"When we thought of the idea of building a facility in Australia , we struggled with Sydney and Brisbane because of the busy port space. Newcastle was fantastic. It was between Brisbane and Sydney, and we had a lot of possibilities here. Its location is fantastic for the business."

The eleven tanks outside Marcos de Oliveira's office hold millions of litres of orange juice concentrate, which is pumped from ships berthing at the nearby Western Basin 3 wharf.

"Through here, we bring between 10 to 14,000 tonnes of juice a year," he explains.

And as the port diversifies beyond coal, Marcos de Oliveira believes orange may well be the new black gold for Newcastle.

"I think the future is bright for Newcastle port," he says.

FOR many years, the closest thing to a harbourside tower in Newcastle was the grain terminal on the western side of The Basin.

"You can see it from a lot of different vantage points from across the city and beyond," says Jade Mann, GrainCorp's Port Operations Manager. "It stands out as part of the Newcastle landscape."

Standing on top of those silos, more than 30 metres above the ground, there is an expansive view of the harbour and the city. But Jade Mann is not looking out and around but down.

He is watching a ship being loaded with grain at the Western Basin berth below.

About 50,000 tonnes of wheat is pouring from two of the terminal's three ship loaders into the vessel, which will carry its cargo to Vietnam.

"We can run up to probably close to 2000 tonnes an hour using two of the ship loaders," Mr Mann explains.

For decades, this place has not just been a Newcastle landmark but a vital link in the supply chain taking Australian grain to the world.

It may be beside the water, but inside the terminal, any scent of sea salt is overpowered by the smell of agriculture.

In total, there are 126 bins with a capacity of about 160,000 tonnes of grain, harvested in the state's heart and carried mostly by rail to the continent's edge here at Newcastle, ready to be exported across the seas.

As Mr Mann explains, "It's the gateway to our growers and to our network and customers across northern New South Wales to the rest of the world."

In the past couple of years, those gates have been thrown wide open by a combination of world events and bumper seasons for Australian growers.

Which has meant the GrainCorp facility, along with the nearby Newcastle Agri Terminal, has been very busy loading ships. Since October 1, the GrainCorp terminal has exported close to 1.4 million tonnes of grain.

"It's massive, it's what you can say is a record harvest for the east coast, and particularly for our area," Mr Mann says, adding what makes it all the more dramatic is that only a few years ago, in the midst of the drought, the terminal was having to import grain from Western Australia and South Australia for local consumers.

"On the back of importing grain ... half a million tonnes to now turning around and outloading 1.6, 1.7 million tonnes, possibly more, it's a massive, massive task."

He may have one of the best harbour views in the city from the top of his silos, but Jade Mann appreciates the broader perspective.

He is proud that what passes through this terminal goes around the globe, sometimes returning as a product that ends up on his own family's dinner plates, such as pasta.

"I tell my daughter, I ask her if she knows the origins of what she's eating, and point out that we probably handled some of that," Mr Mann says.

"To be honest, I have to pinch myself sometimes. My office overlooks this wharf. You look outside and say, 'Well, we're part of that, we're part of feeding the world basically'.

"And we don't take that lightly."

Next week: Part 6 of "Harbour Lives with Scott Bevan"

Read more:

"Harbour Lives with Scott Bevan - Part One": Entering the Port.

"Harbour Lives with Scott Bevan - Part Two: From the 'Dog Beach' to Scratchleys.

"Harbour Lives with Scott Bevan" - Part Three: Along Honeysuckle.

"Harbour Lives with Scott Bevan" - Part Four: Along Wickham's Shore.

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