John Wright believes we should, on occasion, remember the people who helped build the Hunter Region.
His relative John Hodges was one of these people.
He built the Great Northern Hotel at Teralba, along with the Lake Macquarie suburb's gravel quarry and post office.
He also built the former Boolaroo Racecourse and Hodges Hall.
John Wright said Mr Hodges was known for his "charitable and patriotic gestures".
"During the Great War, John Hodges lowered the rents of his tenants by 50 per cent. He also arranged the purchase of the local church for the Catholic parish."
John Wright recalled a "bust picture" of Mr Hodges that had been hanging for years in his grandmother's lounge room in Willoughby.
"My grandmother was Helen Violet Hodges, the daughter of John Hodges," he said.
"The portrait always caught my eye as it was so large - 4-foot x 3-foot in a lovely wooden-carved frame. A picture paints a thousand words."
Mr Hodges arrived in Teralba after time spent as a farmer in Molong. He started a business as the owner of a grocery shop in Teralba. When this was destroyed by fire, he built the Great Northern Hotel in the suburb. It ran for 25 years.
The quarry he opened supplied much of the Newcastle district with road gravel.
"He constructed 40 miles of streets for the A.A. Company," John Wright said.
"He also built the Hamilton markets."
The picture of Mr Hodges was a presentation to him as "a token of appreciation for good citizenship and advancement of the township and its residents".
Mr Hodges died at age 75 in 1922. He was buried in Wallsend Cemetery, leaving four sons and two daughters. Mary, his wife, died at age 65 in 1911.
Steamship Sleeping
Sticking with the distant past, Charlestown's John Miner told Topics he used to travel to Sydney and back on a steamship.
John said the Newcastle and Hunter River Steamship Company would transport beer from the Kent Street brewery in Sydney to Newcastle. The beer run to Newcastle continued "even during the war years".
"They'd load the beer from the Kent Street brewery, near Central Station. The steamship company had wharves of their own right near Newcastle railway station."
He said the company's ships included the Kindur, Karuah and Mulubinda.
John, now 94, was aged 18 in 1946.
"I started my studies in 1946. I used to study in Sydney and come home to work in Newcastle," he said.
"I'd sail at 10pm from Kent Street. For 10 shillings and sixpence, you could get a cabin, sleep all the way to Newcastle and arrive in time for work the next morning.
"I'd get a cup of tea when I woke up and go straight to work first thing. Those were days gone by, my son."
- topics@newcastleherald.com.au
