Ah, Cessnock—a city overflowing with potential.

Cessnock has plenty to see.

Cessnock has plenty to see.

Cessnock has plenty to see.

Cessnock has plenty to see.

Cessnock has plenty to see.

Cessnock has plenty to see.

Located 150km’s or so north of Sydney, Cessnock lies at the southern end of the Hunter Valley wine region, and as such, is a town with a great deal of potential. Despite its conceivable prospects, and being named after a Scotland castle, Cessnock’s latent character and naming heritage is belied by its…actualness. Look, I have family that live there and, like many people, not by choice, so I do have some reservations with regard to flinging too much literary feculence about, but wow. It’s very much a working-class town, which, of course, is perfectly fine—I’m from a working-class background, but the Cessnock population seems heavily burdened with persons who, through no fault of their own, in all likelihood, are the result of questionable upbringing—and the drug situation is, as in most towns to be fair, out of control.

Focussing on the positives, though, there’s a multitude of early 20th Century buildings to check out, if you’re into early 1900’s architecture, including the School of Arts, Court House, and the Water Board building, along with a throng of churches from various denominations, all of which are predated by the Cessnock Inn, Cessnock’s first business, built in 1857. Cessnock’s history is deeply seated in coal mining, and the town has been supported a great deal by the industry, and workers, since it’s early days.

If you’re into wineries, well, great news, as they’re in abundance, and there are wine tour businesses operating in the area, allowing you to really appreciate the cellar door experience and not have to drive. I’m quite partial to a red, or any wine, in truth, but wine tours don’t make for much of a family day out, for me, so we’re more than happy to drive on by. Adding to the list of things to do, that we didn’t, for a more family focussed day out, the Hunter Valley wildlife park is less than 10 minutes from Cessnock CBD and offers the usual zoo/wildlife park experiences such as various private encounters at $150 each, per person, for 20 minutes. General admission is $42 per adult, $28 for 3-15 years, and kids 2 and under free, which all seems fairly standard. Alicia and I share a fondness for avoiding zoos, a point we’ll contradict in a later blog, but for the most part, it’s animals in cages, and outside of giving people an opportunity to experience seeing animals they’d otherwise never get to see, it’s all a little sad, and it just doesn’t float our boat. Continuing the theme of experiences, we chose not to experience, if gardens are your thing, there are the Hunter Valley gardens. Now, I can appreciate a good garden as much as most, but at $36 per adult I don’t have that much of an appreciation—they are, by all accounts, though, meant to be spectacular.

And so, there is a whole list of things to do in Cessnock that make it well worth a look, but we spent most of our short stay catching up with family and dropping off a few boxes of personal things for storage, and buying any bits and pieces that we’d be needing throughout the next 7 weeks. We did venture out to Kitchener dam and Poppet head park, though, about 5k’s out of Cessnock. It’s a nice park with plenty of sealed pathway for kids on bikes, a great playground, the enormous poppet-head from the Aberdare colliery, and Kitchener dam which, once part of the coal mining operation, is now a wetlands area. We stayed at the Cessnock showgrounds which offers water and powered sites for $25 per night. There’s not much around, but as it is used as a training track for harness racing, there’s always horses doing their thing through the day, usually in the morning, and you can take a walk down to the yards where there are often horses kept. There’s plenty of grass for kids to run around on, and while there’s no playground for kids, there is one about a 5-minute walk away.

From here we’ll be heading just over 100k’s north-west of Cessnock for a 7 week house-sit in the small town of Denman, right on the other edge of the Hunter Valley region. As usual, we’ll be a bit concerned about how the Ranger will cope with the climbs, but we’ll take it easy and hopefully all will go well.