Cessnock

Postcode: 2325

Cessnock is a city in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales, Australia in Cessnock City Council. The local area once known as "The Coalfields" is now the gateway city and service centre to the vineyards of the Hunter Valley, which includes Pokolbin, Mount View, Broke, Rothbury, and Branxton.

The town is located in the rich alluvial and volcanic soils of the Hunter Valley. Rich coal seams underly much of the area. The Brokenback Range (part of the Great Dividing Range) rises to the West of the city. The Hunter River flows down the Hunter Valley approximately 20 km to the North.

The transition to wine service centre from a once prosperous mining town has been a long and at times difficult process.

Cessnock lies between Australia’s earliest European settlements - Sydney, the Hawkesbury and the Hunter. Lying on the land route between these important settlements, it provided early European contact with Indigenous people, who have inhabited the Cessnock area for more than 3,000 years. The Darkinjung people were the major inhabitants at the time of European contact, which subsequently proved to be disastrous for the Darkinjung tribe. Many were killed or died as a result of European diseases. Others were forced onto neighbouring tribal territory and killed. The City of Cessnock abounds in Indigenous place names and names with Indigenous association which is indicative of this settlement and include Congewai, Kurri Kurri, Laguna, Nulkaba and Wollombi.

Pastoralists commenced settling the land in the 1820’s. The township of Cessnock developed from 1850, as a service centre at the junction of the Great North Road from Sydney to the Hunter Valley, with branches to Singleton and Maitland. During the 1860’s, land settlement was extensive between Nulkaba and Pokolbin, with wheat, tobacco and grapes the principal crops.

The establishment of the South Maitland coalfields generated extensive land settlement between 1903 and 1923. The current pattern of urban development, transport routes and industrial landscape was laid at this time. The surveying of the Greta coal seam by Professor Edgeworth David around 1888 became the impetus for considerable social and economic change in the area with the development of the coal mining industry.

Whilst mining was the principal industrial base and source of employment in the Cessnock area for the first half of this century, a slump which commenced about 1960 forced the closure of many mines. Subsequent changes to the mining industry, including automation and the introduction of sophisticated computerised equipment, led to the closure of the vast majority of the remaining mines in the area. This has resulted in a decline in population in many villages and townships over the last twenty years which has lead to the closure of some schools, shops and community meeting places. Consequently, many areas have undergone a change in character, with rural residential housing developments becoming popular, as well as small cottages and farms used principally as weekend retreats.

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