Newcastle Show fighting for survival

A NOVOCASTRIAN ALLIANCE: Newcastle solicitor Peter Evans and union figure Daniel Wallace,colleagues on the Newcastle show association board. The main photo shows the showground stables, with their fibro roofs, fenced off as an asbestos hazard to be demolished. Picture: Marina Neil

SOLICITOR Peter Evans is about as close to a blue-blood as you can get in Newcastle.

With his blue pinstripe suits and the looks and the voice to carry it off, Mr Evans is an institution around the city.

Although he professes to not be a member of the Liberal Party, his natural inclinations lean that way, together with a desire to do what's best for Newcastle, from a top-end-of-town point of view.

So when Peter Evans decides he will back former Newcastle Trades Hall Council secretary Daniel Wallace in a blue with the Coalition state government over various goings on at the Newcastle Showground, it's something that the government, and the Hunter public, ought to take some notice of.

It's no secret that Newcastle Show was on its knees, and not for the first time, a few years ago.

And it's equally a matter of public record that the NSW government has its eyes on a major redevelopment of the so-called "Broadmeadow precinct" - that large rectangle of land that is now largely given over to sporting pursuits, and was the site of the city's first airport, before that.

TOXIC TIME: The stables row exemplifies the deteriorating relations between Venues NSW and the Newcastle show board. Picture: Jonathan Carroll

Although the showground reputedly carries some form of heritage listing, the early material to emerge from government consultants on the housing site - which carries the name Hunter Park - shows housing across much of the area we know colloquially as "the showgrounds".

Given the way that governments generally tend to get their way when they set their minds to it, there's a view that the annual Newcastle Show - and the weekly Newcastle City Farmers Market and the other occasional attractions that use the space - are on borrowed time in that location.

But as chairman of the Newcastle Agricultural, Horticultural and Industrial Association Incorporated, Mr Evans says he was assured by the relevant government minister that if they could turn the show into a profitable venture, they could stay on the site.

In other words, he believes he had a deal, and that the government is reneging on it.

The necessities of COVID restrictions have put paid to all sorts of organised entertainments this past year, but a massive effort is under way to keep the Newcastle Show alive.

The bigger the crowd, the greater the chance of that dream becoming reality.

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BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY: Sideshow alley in 2019. After a lot of hard work to revive the Newcastle Show, organisers fear the state government's focus is on its housing plans for the Broadmeadow precinct, and little else. Picture: Marina Neil

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