\u201cThe station said: \u2018we\u2019ll play it every time the Knights get up\u2019 and then the Knights just kept on winning,\u201d says Arvidson, who sang the Newcastle song three times at a civic reception for the victorious team<\/a>.<\/p>\n The lyrics, gleefully chanted by most in the crowd, catalogued the unvarnished parts of a working-class city familiar to those of us who came of age about that time. Inside jokes and local tropes. 3am hamburgers. Pub fights. Snogging in the car park at the Strzelecki lookout. \u201cOrange shit in the sky\u201d from the glowing steelworks at Mayfield.<\/p>\n double quotation markHe got out at Civic station, walked across the lines \/ He saw the big penis, and said \u2018where the fuck am I?\u2019<\/p>\n Newcastle whoaooooh \/ It\u2019s so beautiful my dear \/ They can bury me here<\/p>\n They tore down the big penis in 2018.<\/p>\n The unfortunately shaped Queens Wharf Tower had apparently become an \u201cembarrassment to the city\u201d<\/a> and needed to go in the name of urban renewal.<\/p>\n The Newcastle Knights celebrate their victory over the Parramatta Eels in the 2001 NRL grand final at Stadium Australia. Photograph: AAP<\/p>\n The nearby Civic station was left stranded a few years earlier, when the old heavy rail lines were controversially ripped up.<\/p>\n Most of the pubs in Arvidson\u2019s song have since been shut or bulldozed. Islington and Carrington (\u201clock your doors\u201d) have gentrified and become trendy. East End (\u201cparty, party, party\u201d) residents banded together a few years back to voice concern about the noise from a Supercars race<\/a>.<\/p>\n As the Newcastle Knights prepare for a first NRL<\/a> grand final in 25 years, they will represent a city that in many ways looks and feels very different from the rough-around-the-edges place Arvidson sang about in 2001.<\/p>\n The first wave of Knights successes came against a backdrop of uncertainty about what a post-industrial future might mean for the steel city. Two decades on, for better or worse, working-class Newcastle is now safer, more confident and outward-looking; also more expensive and exclusive.<\/p>\n \u201cI deliberately wanted to tap into the locals\u2019 experience, for people who have lived here all their lives, just to paint it in from a place where only they\u2019re going to relate to,\u201d Arvidson says.<\/p>\n \u201cBut those experiences we\u2019re talking about, they don\u2019t exist any more.\u201d<\/p>\n Steel city takes centre stage<\/p>\n For a brief moment about the turn of the millennium, grungy Newcastle might have seemed like the centre of the universe.<\/p>\n Three teenagers became internationally famous in 1994, while still at Newcastle high school, with a song written in the bedroom of a house in Merewether<\/a>.<\/p>\n The frontman of the band, Daniel Johns, shared his surname with two other young local blokes, Matthew and Andrew, who came up through the ranks at the Knights. Within a few years, they would all be superstars.<\/p>\n Silverchair found the secret to international success in a Merewether bedroom. Photograph: Supplied by Hachette<\/p>\n Perhaps in the same way that struggle can inspire great art, the Newcastle of the 1990s was a community shaped by uncertainty and tragedy, a city forced through natural disaster and economic deregulation to reckon with its place in the modern world.<\/p>\n Three days after Christmas in 1989, the Newcastle earthquake violently remodelled the city. The Newcastle Workers Club building collapsed, killing nine people. The quake left physical scars \u2013 there were an estimated 50,000 buildings damaged \u2013 and emotional ones.<\/p>\n In April 1997, BHP announced that the Newcastle steelworks \u2013 the town\u2019s largest employer, and at one point among Australia\u2019s largest \u2013 would close.<\/p>\n Steelmaking had been central to Newcastle\u2019s identity and for many 1997 was a time of existential worry about what the town would become.<\/p>\n The community angst seemed to heighten the emotion around the football side\u2019s upstart run to the grand final against Manly. The owner of a home around the corner from the stadium painted the weatherboards red and blue. Those unable to get tickets lined the freeway to wave at the team bus.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of uncertainty in the community,\u201d says Craig Hamilton, a veteran sportscaster from Newcastle who called the 1997 grand final from the sideline.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there was a hope that the Knights might win, they were huge underdogs in that game. There were a lot in Newcastle who were just happy the team had made the grand final.<\/p>\n \u201cBut to win it changed the dynamic. What the Newcastle Knights did in winning that first grand final was to lift the whole town out of any doom and gloom they may have been feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n Allow Instagram content?<\/p>\n This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’.<\/p>\n Ask any Novocastrian now about 1997, and their defining moments are Darren Albert\u2019s last minute try. Andrew Johns skateboarding shirtless down King Street. Matthew Johns declaring on morning television that the victory was \u201cbetter than Lego\u201d<\/a>. The Screaming Jets in Civic Park.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |Every day<\/p>\n Sign up to Australia Sport<\/p>\n Get a daily roundup of the latest sports news, features and comment from our Australian sports desk<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The vivid memories of 1997 have overlaid much of this week\u2019s grand final hype.<\/p>\n From boom to bust<\/p>\n There\u2019s a missing bit to this story: 25 often fraught years for the football club, and the city.<\/p>\n On-field success became rarer, and the sale of the Knights to the coal baron Nathan Tinkler must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Then Tinkler went bust, leaving a trail of debts across town and the team at a low ebb.<\/p>\n The community seemed unable to decide on anything remotely contentious about the future of the city. The saga of the heavy rail line rumbled on for more than a decade, until it was finally cut and replaced with trams.<\/p>\n Rosemarie Milsom, the founder of the Newcastle writers festival, began discussing the idea in about 2012, when there were \u201cmany, many empty shopfronts\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no light rail, and no discussions about an inner-city university campus. No one knew what a writers festival was. It was very hard going,\u201d Milsom says.<\/p>\n Newcastle has become known of more than just its beaches and ocean baths. Photograph: Matt Lauder Gallery\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Nowadays working-class Newcastle is (whisper it quietly) almost trendy. There\u2019s a Japanese-inspired vinyl listening bar right across from where the infamous old strip club used to be. An influx of Sydney seachangers during the Covid years has put even more pressure on property prices, and on the city\u2019s blue collar and artistic roots.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people don\u2019t like [some of the changes to the city],\u201d Milsom says. \u201cMy husband is one of them. They don\u2019t like this idea that they can\u2019t just pull up at the ocean baths and get a park. It irritates people.<\/p>\n \u201cThe concern for me is what happens with gentrification everywhere is you lose the artists, you lose the musicians, you drive them out. You can\u2019t have an artistic practice and afford to live.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790800814_158_300.jpg\")
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