Newcastle, it's been an interesting week.
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On Wednesday I was delighted to join in the celebration at the season launch for the Newcastle Knights. After a 2023 breakout season, which delivered the club's first home final in 17 years, there are high hopes for the year ahead. The NRLW team has enjoyed back to back premierships, so there really is plenty for the city's footy fans to be optimistic about.
Then on Friday, Business Hunter and the University of Newcastle pulled together a very special evening, with the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, popping into the city to address the Nexus gala dinner at our beautiful City Hall.
The Prime Minister told the gathering of mostly politicians, and university and business representatives about the great resilience of Newcastle, reflecting on its recovery after the end of the steelworks and its key role in the nation's transition to renewable energy. He lauded the region as an example of "what we can achieve when we act with urgency and purpose, optimism and determination".
"It is an absolutely beautiful part of our country," he said. "Not just physically, but your most important asset, the community here and the culture ... of looking after each other.
"It is a community that can teach us so much about responding to challenges and seizing opportunities. Newcastle and the Hunter tell a great Australian story of resilience and reconstruction."
After listening to Mr Albanese's speech, I was fortunate to be able to reflect on his words further with the person sitting next to me, a person who has had a front seat ticket to Newcastle and the Hunter's transformation and resilience over the past nearly 40 years, Newcastle Herald reporter Ian Kirkwood.
Ian has spent 37 years writing thousands of articles on everything from coal to council, state and federal politics and countless columns. He was instrumental in exposing the secret deal to protect Botany from a Newcastle container terminal, which the state government of the time repeatedly denied both in and out of parliament.
This past week Kirky, as he is known to many, has decided to pull up stumps on his termendous career, and enjoy a well-earned retirement.
In a lot of ways Kriky's resilience has mirrored that of the city he will be forever entwined with. Long-term readers would remember his columns detailing his shock cancer diagnosis and his subsequent battles.
Ian has written a farewell piece for Herald readers, a piece I am choosing not to call his final column, because, in his own words, "we never know what's round the corner". In it, he reflects on a magnificent career and the changing media landscape, and bravely details the highs and lows of his cancer fight.
As Mr Albanese said during his address, "you should never write off a Novocastrian because, even when the furnaces of the steelworks went cold, the spark of creativity and innovation in Newcastle and the Hunter was still there, firing this community's reinvention". Novocastrians are tough, innovative and resilient. And Kirky is one great Novocastrian.
Congratulations to Ian on an amazing career, we wish him great surf and biting fish in his retirement.
Have a good Sunday.
Lisa Allan
