Material and symbolic identities of Newcastle: Continuity and change

The city of Newcastle has undergone significant changes of identity over the last 200 years. This chapter outlines the shifting identities of Newcastle from Aboriginal Awabakal times through penal colony, to a major industrial centre based on coal and steel. It then traces the city's postwar industrial upheaval and reinvention as a sustainable city based on both industry and consumption. These identities have not been neatly packaged, conveniently terminating at a point in time to make way for a newer phase of identity. In reality, they have overlapped and involved periods of sometimes difficult transition and upheaval. Nonetheless, in tracing these phases in the shifting identities of the city, it is possible to follow lines of continuity and change through Newcastle's history.