The City of Levees

Joe Frost (1974-) painted this work for the exhibition View of Maitland from the riverbank (with apologies to Jan Vermeer and View of Delft), shown at Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG) in 2006. Alongside eleven other commissioned artists, Frost painted a view of Maitland on a canvas the same size as that used by the […]

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Elemental Tension

  Fire and flood, the diametric poles of natural disaster, are recurring features of the Australian landscape. In this panoramic print, Tim Maguire suggests their all-encompassing and immersive effects, in which the world we know is consumed by elemental forces. The work was created for Maitland, a city which has been defined by dramatic floods […]

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Racing to Help

This pennant was won by Ron Ekert (1930-2019) in the senior musical flag competition during Caves Beach Surf Life Saving Club’s Carnival of 1950-1951. Ron was a well-known Life Member of the Caves Beach Surf Life Saving Club, and in 2007 the Club named its new surf boat in his memory. A talented athlete in […]

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Saving Life and Property

Colourful streamers stretched across the water and spectators lined the riverbanks, while the Federal Band played upbeat tunes and ladies served tea from a patriotically decorated tent. The impressive turnout was for the 1915 Carnival at the Horseshoe Bend of the Hunter River at Maitland, hosted by the West Maitland Water Brigade. The afternoon’s events […]

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Over Troubled Water

What does it take to make a bridge safe and sturdy? Perhaps it’s usually just good design and sound engineering. But in the case of Long Bridge in Maitland, where catastrophic floods are common, it has taken construction, reconstruction and rebuilding five times over the past 200 years. These 16 plans prepared by the NSW […]

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Looking Back to Look Forward

As scientists forecast increasingly erratic weather events and debate ways to effectively reduce the impacts of climate change, it is equally important to look back and learn how communities in the past have dealt with catastrophic weather events such as floods. This flood level marker from Maitland, made in 1982 for installation on electricity poles […]

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