Eleven o’clock departure time was an hour ago, yet Newcastle Harbour lay wide, flat, blue .. and empty.
There was no sign of that injured Panamax freighter about to leave the people of this busy little sea port, to whom it had become so endeared.
A march of waves slapped against rocks, catching our attention: "Perhaps we missed it!" someone chuckled, creating a ripple of giggles.
Another: "Well, if the choppers are circling it, then it must be heading upstream towards Tomago shipyards" and the amiable crowd smiled some more.
"It must have run aground in the basin" was another theory contributed to explain the non-appearance of Pasha Bulker, leaving port for climes unknown in Asia for repairs.
"Well, there’s five tugs this time, not the usual three. I’d say they’re all tangled and are trying to sort the mess!"
After all, we had to amuse ourselves in the absence of the star attraction, "it," the coal freighter Pasha Bulker whose astonishing arrival had been the most sensational event in decades.
Meanwhile the Newcastle Port Corporation’s dredge, David Allan, chugged by for the umpteenth time, paranoid, it seemed, to ensure the channel hadn’t suddenly developed a threat that might embarrass the Port, and particularly the Pasha B., in some far-fetched mishap.
"Let’s just check the draught one more time" one imagines the Captain thinking.
The first chopper to arrive that morning was the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s sleek silver bird that thundered into Newcastle’s perfect calm July morning from the south.
After a commanding sweep of the harbour it took station above the Eastern Basin where the Pasha Bulker was being manoeuvred from it’s cosy berth near the wheat silos, scene of many a grand launching in Newcastle’s ship-building glory days.
Soon the bright red Seven Network chopper arrived, then two Hunter Valley tour helicopters and, adding to the cacophony, more Sydney TV network whirlybirds, the swarm buzzing around like so many Hexham Grey mosquitos mistaking the harbour for Hexham Swamp.
Shores north and south of Newcastle Harbour were packed with delighted sightseers, both locals and from several hours drive distant. Even the TV choppers had flown 80 aerial miles north from Sydney.
The day was balmy, clear, blue-skied and bright, with a gentle cooling breeze.
Image right: Fort Scratchley fires a four-cannon salute in honour of a common little ship that became so special.
It was simply the most stunningly-perfect Newcastle day for a perfect harbour spectacle.
Busloads of school students filled the northern breakwater to partake a historic juxtaposition: the Pasha Bulker, a rare escapee from coastal peril, sailing by those rusting hulks beneath the rocky barricade on which they walked.
On this most serenely-beautiful of days before this glorious vista of Newcastle’s headland, sand and harbour these kids stood, absorbing the irony of innumerable broken ships around them that became Oyster Bank victims (and, eventually, the harbour’s northern breakwater) and the sleek silent passage of our lady of the sea, the Pasha Bulker, bruised and scarred, cruising seaward mere tens of meters away, having just escaped both sudden death on Newcastle rocks - and lingering decay on the sands of Nobbys Beach.
And past us she went, shiny and clean, humming efficiently, filling the channel with red and cream hugeness, a large yellow bungee strap hanging from bow, two big staples mending her side, all with spectacle and ceremony, at the same time with respect and humility.
Image left: Local NBN Television news team capture the moment of the decade.
People and vehicles simply packed the northern shore from the east-most tip of the northern breakwater back to the passenger ferry terminal.
Every vantage on the south bore - from Horseshoe beach, along The Foreshore, through restaurant precincts to Honeysuckle - unprecedented crowds .. for a mere Panamax coal ship.
No-one onshore would guess the emotions of those onboard the Pasha B. as she swept briskly along the channel toward Nobbys.
First, curious surprise, as the port narrowed past Stockton, upon seeing the people lining the shoreline, by any standard an immense crowd for this tiny city.
Then the Pasha Bulker’s crew would finally have understood what was happening. This was no idly-curious gathering, nor bored city residents seeking novelty.
Thousands of curious yet appreciative eyes followed the injured ship. A consensus wave of relief flowed with the giant stricken lady, a silent surge of well-wishing for her homeward limp.
This was no mob of gawky sightseers, but a giant communal ‘helping hand’ of encouragement, a show of appreciation for men and ships that are still the life blood of this great port and seafaring nation.
Each time one of these magnificent vessels tests the brink of survival, they become suddenly alive, gathering, as a symbol, tributes and attention normally unexpressed towards the convoy floating just off our coast.
Newcastle .. loves ships.
Fort Scratchley’s World War Two cannons - that last shelled in anger sixty-two years ago - fired four salutes during the Pasha’s channel run. This was indeed a special and fun day, yet something more. Novocastrians, by the simple presence of a port, feel empathy and duty towards ships.
We feel pride when they arrive, pride when they leave. We instinctively - though few realise it - feel a loss, too, when they go. Especially to elsewhere in the world when this country, and this 200 year old port, should still be the major maritime nation it once was.
Now Australia is just a quarry, the very thing our teachers warned us in school, decades ago, while other nations gather the lucrative fees for our huge offshore tonnage.
Did you know the "Australian National Line" is a foreign-owned shipping line and world’s third-largest, yet began life as the Australian Coastal Shipping Commission fifty years ago? Of course you didn’t. You’ve forgotten successive Australian governments have pretty-well given away the farm for some peppercorns.
Each time a ship leaves our port, it steals a little of our pride and former glory.
.. is never enough!
The city lit up for a week or two, buzzing with visitors and excitement.
A grand lady of the sea defied humiliation to sit boldly prominent on our favourite beach as though it was her choice, if not duty.
Delightfully without injury (except maybe to the Captain’s pride) and no more than a sharp abrasion and crumpled skin, the Pasha Bulker lurched ashore one weekday morning in a stinging fresh June gale.
Scraping the rocks off Newcastle City she lit up thousands of cell phones around town as the buzz exploded.
Workers privy to the news, and flexibly able, deserted their posts in a dash to the wind-torn, sand-blasted headlands at Newcastle East to witness a once in a lifetime drama: shipwreck on the very doorstep of this pocket seaport.
In the howling cyclonic gale-force winds fascinated onlookers stood, or tried to stand, as blasting plumes of spray, salt, and sand, literally sent the unwary sprawling along the ground. And in sheer disbelief that such a spectacular and unlikely drama could play out on such an otherwise mundane cityscape.
Pictured above, as the ship washed over rocks towards the beach in what witnesses describe as "awesome, spectacular and dramatic" experience. Thereafter, ocean drives were jammed with crowds and traffic for weeks.
Below, the WestPac rescue chopper in the most audacious and heroic airlift of the crew off the wind and wave-swept decks of the stricken (love that word) ship. Of course, in hindsight they were far safer in crew quarters, and the chopper better off back at base, but an overriding concern in the long history of rescuing crews from foundering ships in Newcastle, one never knew what the ailing vessel might do (capsize, break up) and so rescuers’ lives must be risked.
And there for a month the great Panamax carrier sat.
Dominating the cityline and dwarfing Nobbys Beach 
pavilion, Pasha Bulker posed for endless photographers, artists, spectators, rounds of visitors from dignitary to emergency worker, salvagers, police, environmental .. well, just all of them!
And as if the swarms of choppers, tugs, launches and
television ENG vans weren’t enough, with a simple tilt of her bridge (so it seemed) she brought the entire city of Newcastle to a crazed traffic-jamming halt. For weeks.
This was a magical shipwreck.
That 76,000 tonnes of streamlined floating steel should 
deposit itself so cleanly - though not without a little dramatic flurry - on our most iconic shoreline literally shocked Novocastrians from their daily-drudgery and work stupor.
You see, almost only from the sea does the world truly visit Newcastle.
No-one famous has been here since 1955 when the Queen of England rattled on through waving diffidently from a royally-blue diesel-powered train.
Fabulous media performers might appear briefly on local theatre stages, then vanish so completely it’s not entirely certain they were actually in town, as no fanfare was noted, no screaming fans, press conferences, nor paparazzi - only a tiny over-lit figure purporting to be said celeb. several hundred meters away beyond a vast crowd.
And despite frequent flyer points, Prime Ministers and State Premiers count for little (or less than).
I think you’ll find consensus around town - only the seaways draw amazing foreign visitors. And like Sydney Harbour, the waters off Port Hunter are Newcastle’s communal stage, our public meeting place.
The harbour claims our attention - though most Novocastrians have forgotten why. Few alive recall the great days when this self-sufficient region exported superfluous wealth to the overseas needy.
Unlike Sydney, that has a bridge to light crackers on, our bridge, the Stockton Bridge, is not at Stockton or even the harbour, so it’s not much good for anything except getting to Stockton.
Despite this shortcoming we love Newcastle Harbour, basking in the smartly-dressed foreshore restaurants or refreshing our lives along the watery walkways, and throng delightedly to each great man-made mammoth that floats in to share life with us for a while.
And boy, what fun, what an event, when one such visitor 
should get it so wrong.
It became somewhat of a city festival, with attendant free drama and entertainment at otherwise the dullest time of year.
I propose the Mattara Festival include a mock surf boat race at Nobbys Beach, with local boats painted Lauritzen fleet colours, similar to the Todd River regatta.
Pasha Bulker will never move, declared old-timers, based on the farcical attempts to likewise shift the Sygna 34 years earlier from Stockton Beach just north of the city.
Salvagers knew better and confidently laid their plans that astonishingly - to most of us, and to our equally-great relief - saw this shiny new incongruity dragged sideways (of all things!) into the deep during king tide one quiet night - with a fortunate assist from the weather.
She’ll be the talk of the town for the next thirty years.
Novocastrian Rant ~ "Pasha’d-out"
Cruising the promenade is a habit beloved of Novocastrians.
By 1900 Newcastle Beach - posing infrastructure fully developed - was the place to be seen, in top hats and refinery, walking the walk and seen to do so by one’s peers.
Since the Second World War, when cars became affordable to youth, Hunter Street was "the drag" and beach esplanades the cruising scene.
Newcastle’s east-enders reluctantly tolerate rice boys jamming the foreshore and beach drives on Friday nights, or scenic King Edward Park on sunny weekends - as their grandparents similarly scowled at hot rods of the fifties, or lowered EH Holdens of the sixties, and so on.
Ever thankful too, our east-enders, that barbarians from the outer burbs - south of Charlestown, west of New Lambton Heights, or Maitland and the Terrace way - keep generally clear of our quite little city’s beach precincts, except perhaps for urgent business.
It couldn’t last. The peace and quiet, that is.
In fifty years only the second spectacular sea drama to invite itself on our shores, the Pasha Bulker gave the city, and region, a stir of novelty and excitement stranding itself cetacean-like on Newcastle’s most picturesque beach front.
Well, novelty one day, a curse the next.
As if the crowds weren’t intolerable, or the weekend traffic gridlock extending to Hunter Street West.
Even worse, the insane lockdown of Newcastle East by authorities - as if restricting the beach wasn’t already too much. The community of Parnell Place call it "Gaza Strip" - their homes on the wrong side of police checkpoints.
One resident - waiting to get a smashed headlight repaired - is directed curbside for a defect notice every time he leaves or returns home, and must endure the painful confrontation with each shift’s new cop.
But the total exclusion zone encompassing the beach and breakwater past Nobbys Lighthouse is anal authoritarianism.
Newcastle is a city of barricades.
Fort Scratchley has been a DMZ for years - our prize tourist attraction and delightful viewpoint of the coastline, the hill to the right in our banner image - prohibited to all Novocastrians and visitors due to no more than chronic inaction.
One of the city’s finest architectural works, years vacant ex-Newcastle Post Office, stands barricaded in the picturesque heart of commerce, rendering what ought be a tourist showcase little more than a symbol of decay.
These damn rent-a-fences are everywhere. One imagines fence lobbyists jamming the corridors of city hall.
When Sygna came ashore, in those recently-modern times , the sightseers mingled with salvage workers without incident, or great interest from authorities - unlike the draconian intolerant nonsense imposing itself at Nobbys around the Pushy Balker.
Newcastle has, in fact, gone a little hysterical - and not from any press beat up.
The boys with badges brandish their toys with adrenaline and gusto, delighted in an emergency not drawing them to an ugly domestic or some such no-win crime scene. Aroused too are the weekend cowboys, with choppers and trucks with sirens.
Meanwhile the (stoic, frequently heroic) guys and gals in them love-hate orange overalls get to block of some streets and wield chainsaws, with half the city’s trees minus a branch and general pandemonium in suburbs built in creek beds.
Ma and Pa are fascinated by a break in the tedium; mum and dad apprehensively recall the ‘89 quake; the young have never imagined such drama.
Happy to see an end to the Polka Dotta? Not really, just the hullabaloo I guess.
