Welcome to the Mayfield Website

The Mayfield Website was created in 1995 to provide primary historical source materials such as early printed accounts, pioneer letters, oral history transcriptions, photographs, maps and plans on the little known history of the Newcastle suburb. It was the initiative of University Archivist Mr. Gionni Di Gravio and subsequently identified by the National Library of Australia for inclusion in their Pandora archive as one of ‘national significance’.

The Mayfield website has led to our participation on a number of industrial, business and community committees involved in collaborative projects and initiatives utilising historical archival records held in the Unit and published online.

Firstly, there was our involvement on the Beyond 2000 Technical Sub-Committee for Steel River Project. This Project was originally conceived as a partnership between industry, community and government that would “create a world-leading eco-industrial park generating employment for over 2000 people.” It received The Royal Australian Planning Institute’s Award for Excellence in Planning as a result of 18 months work that began in June 1996 and wound up at the end of 1997. It has also led to the arrival of the CSIRO Energy Research Division to the local region and will spawn great benefits in future collaborative ventures with the University.

As well, there was a Mayfield community and Newcastle Council collaborative event in November 2002 entitled “Mayfield 2304: Soul Guts Spirit” which used historical resources from our website in its planning and producing further oral histories and resources in partnership with Council and the University’s School of Design, Communication and Information Technology.

We also assisted in a joint venture between the University’s Cultural Industries and Practices Research Centre (CIPS) local business and the Mayfield Main Street Business committee to oversee the creation of heritage walks in the local area.

Another community digital initiative spawned from The Mayfield Website was the Virtual Coquun-Hunter River Project. The Project aims to create a digital repository of all the published early accounts and descriptions of the Hunter Region.

We hope you find these digitised research materials consisting of early accounts from travellers’ journals, oral history transcriptions, photographs, maps, plans and much more relating to the history of Mayfield helpful.