BEING homeless and without work is no new phenomena.
Back in the "hungry 30s", 1930s that is, most of the world's population was jobless in the wake of the huge 1929 stock market crash.
But much earlier In Newcastle, the mighty BHP Steelworks had a crippling shutdown in the early 1920s, the severe crisis created by overseas steel dumping. Later this was book-ended by a 15-month coal lockout. This left the region very weakened economically to face the major crisis of the 1930s.
For in the Hunter, the so-called Great Depression had started much earlier (from June 1922, really) and lasted years longer than elsewhere. Novocastrians did it tough, really tough.
From the initial 1922-23 recession onwards, thousands of local families came close to starvation.
With no place to live, or work, makeshift housing camps popped up everywhere. There were at least eight main sites around Newcastle.
There was "Texas" at Carrington, plus a settlement called "Coral Trees" at Stockton, to about 150 unemployed men living at the Adamstown Rifle Range, to "Hollywood" in the bush at Jesmond, to humpies at Platts Estate and "Tramcar", both at Waratah. The last camp housed 17 men in single men in old tramcars hauled to the site for accommodation.
At one stage, 58 desperate people even lived in the pigsties at Waratah saleyards.
For most people, however, the most obvious reminder of the jobless plight was the camp in the scrub beside Nobbys beach, at Horseshoe beach.
This famous Nobbys Camp was supposed to last for only three months in 1930, but actually existed until late 1937 when, with a looming war, the Defence Department acquired the land. At that moment, there were a staggering 81 shacks on site, housing 144 people (including 71 men) who all had to leave.
But to other people, with jobs and a little better off, the camps apparently didn't exist. For example, when the art deco Great Northern Hotel in Scott Street, Newcastle, opened in 1938, one of the two giant paintings displayed in its foyer by Tooth & Co was called "Leisure". It showed surfers and people in swimsuits frolicking on a summer day at a beach around from Nobbys. It was a happy myth separated from the grim reality of daily life nearby.
One person, however, who still recalls living in a modest shack at Nobbys Camp is the gracious Amelia "Tootie" Ross, of Newcastle.
She contacted merecently to see if anyone else remembered living at Nobbys Camp in the 1930s.
"I can't be the only one, surely," she said.
"I made a public appeal before, but it only turned up a woman who lived in Parnell Place in the East End in the 1940s.
"She didn't remember any unemployment camp at all.
"Hardly anyone seems to know that Nobbys Camp ever existed. I'm 88 years old now and our family only lived a couple of interesting years there before we moved to The Junction, then Cooks Hill.
"I was only a child at Nobbys Camp, but I do remember some things clearly. I remember Dad putting out fishing nets off (Horseshoe) beach all night and dividing the haul up later with others living there. Once a stingray was caught in the net," she said.
"I didn't know we were disadvantaged. No one we knew had any money. That was normal. My very first memory of being there was when a neighbour threw out some dishwater accidentally on me. He nearly had a fit. He was a Scotsman and he said, 'Oh, I've wet the wee bairn'.
"Later, after we moved, I never mentioned we'd came from Nobbys Camp. You wouldn't mention it as it was seen as a slum. That was just the custom then.
"I don't remember though what our (makeshift) house was made of - tin and wood, I suppose, with a hessian bag (cloth) door perhaps.
"In recent years I've read about researchers making a significant find down at Nobbys. Of an Aboriginal midden, of discarded oyster shells, but I had a laugh as I suspect it really came from unemployed people from Nobbys Camp eating oysters there much, much later.
"One time my Dad, Wal, told me that my mother had once made scones for Lord and Lady Gowrie, Australia's Governor-General (1936-44) when they made a goodwill trip to the camp," Mrs Ross said.
"I only hope they turned out OK as my mum was the worse scone maker in the world. I usually got the job of making scones," she said.
Mrs Ross said the family finally escaped the stigma of Nobbys Camp in 1936 with the help of a Saint Vincent de Paul social worker Mr Driscoll. This was unusual because at the time there was antagonism and bitter divisions between the two main religions.
"Dad was a strict Presbyterian and Mr Driscoll was a Catholic. He was wonderful," Mrs Ross said.
"He helped us out of there to get a (rented) house at The Junction, then at Cooks Hill he came once a fortnight to cut Dad's hair. I'm also still a bit of a hoarder with food in the fridge even today."
Now a widow, Mrs Ross said that much later, with help from a loan, the family gambled and bought two then very cheap houses in Cooks Hill, probably in the 1940s.
"As Dad was a labourer, originally from Sydney, he worked while we all lived in one house and took in boarders to make ends meet," she said.
"The other house we rented out to try and get ahead. It was two-storey and our tenant was paying one pound, two shillings and six pence (about $2.25) a week, but he rented out his top storey for profit.
"Dad approached him to put up the rent, which was fair, but the tenant replied he was a returned soldier and the courts would rule against Dad who never had a chance. It was all under an old 'Fair Rent' scheme introduced in World War II to stop profiteering, but it backfired and hurt people for years."
Inner-Newcastle in those pre-World War II days were also full of colourful characters, now long disappeared.
"There was an eccentric old lady called 'Gum Tip Annie' who was selling gum leaves door-to-door. She wore a black hat and scarf. People would lock the door when she came around because if she didn't sell you something, she'd really swear at you.
"And behind the Delany Hotel in Cooks Hill lived Old Charlie, called "Chaffbag Charlie". He was also eccentric. He was supposed to have invented the starting gates used at the racetracks, but never received any recognition for it," she said.
"He had cut blocks of wood in horse shapes to be pulled by string on the top of his fence. He'd hold races there. He never worse shoes, summer or winter and would get around dressed in a singlet.
"Anyway, I think my father just wanted to forget our days at Nobbys Camp. That's why I'd love to know if there's anyone still alive with memories of life there," she said.
"Some people say you shouldn't say anything, but when you get to my age it doesn't really matter. It's a great pity people forget their local history."
