One month, four headlines, three impressively clickbaity PR emails, and one journo. Consider the sample:
June 8: "A new study shows Novocastrians' favourite cuisines!" (spoiler alert: it's Italian).
June 12: Newcastle is ranked No. 9 for cultural experience in Australia. (Of course, we beat Wollongong).
June 18: Newcastle named as "cheapest city" (the quote marks are mine because I'm assuming the good folks from this data set have never tried to buy a house at Merewether) for a post-work pint.
July 4: Newcastle is ranked one of the world's most underrated cities (second only to Filandia, Southern Tunisia, Sao Sebastiao, Con Dao, Prince Edward Island *deep breath in* Sibiu, some place called "Tasmania", and Cochamo Valley ... but we beat Bentonville, Arkansas!)
The old newsroom adage goes that it only takes three data points to make a trend. And here we have four. That's more than enough for Topics to call it. Newcastle has been recognised so many times as an underrated gem that, at this point, it must be true. We're so underrated that we keep getting rated just to prove it.
Rating the underratedness of our well-discovered criminal under-discoveredness seems to have become a bit of a cottage industry among the tourism media set. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's nice to feel loved - and it is a truth universally acknowledged that after separating the day from the night and the land from the water, on the seventh day, He kicked off his sandals and threw out a towel on Newcastle Beach to even out the toga tan.
But when the travel PR people rave so often, not only about how surprised they are to find we exist but that it's actually nice up here in God's country, the love starts to feel a bit double-sided. It's like when your best frenemy says they "love your style" and immediately follows up with "I love how you'll just wear anything". Or when the waiter with the absurdly delicious hors d'oeuvres makes another round of the room and smiles in that innocent way that waiters do as you shovel in another hunk of pork belly.
It's not that I'm cynical; it's just that three data points make a trend (I really am a very diligent journalist), and just because I look like I got dressed in the dark this morning doesn't mean we can make eye contact when I'm going goblin mode on the canapes, Liam.
It hasn't just been in the last month, either. Believe it or not (anyone who might be reading this in Syd-ahh, who are we kidding, you're probably still stuck in traffic at Rozelle), the state's second city in size, first in our hearts, has been making the underrated ratings for a while.
Back in 2011, Lonely Planet (which, for anyone born after Y2K, was like a hardcopy version of Booking.com mixed with Wikipedia that you bought about a month before you went on holidays and never bothered to actually read) reckoned Newcastle was one of the world's top 10 cities to visit. That was a list that even Sydney had never made. But there we were - underrated as ever.
To be fair to the travel-blogging, destination listicle-making, underrated raters of the rankings set, they could have chosen worse than Newcastle (... Canberra). And when they do make the wise and sage "discovery" of the universally known fact that we are the greatest city on earth, the bloggers at least get our good side. Time Out magazine is the latest to declare our underratedness, for example, and raves about all our best talking points, from our brilliant coastline to our world-class restaurants, cafes, and ocean baths, which are all second to none, even if we do say so ourselves.
They forgot to mention the humble and bashful locals, though. We can only assume that with all the other iconic stuff we have lying around, another feather in our proverbial cap might simply blind a prospective visitor with the glory of our awe. For the sake of the next lot of tourists and travel bloggers who "discover" little ol' underrated us, we must hide at least a little of our light.
Still, and to be clear, while it's nice to get the recognition (and we can only assume the exorbitantly large cheque for the prize money is in the post, right guys?), Newcastle is so much more than an underrated haven two hours' drive from Sydney. If anything, Sydney is a two-hour drive from us.
But we don't want to oversell it. Rate us for yourself - everyone else has.
