The Cottage Creek Precinct is the main commercial centre of Honeysuckle, with the Sparke Helmore Building housing busy offices. Construction is now underway on two new major commercial developments – the PricewaterhouseCoopers Centre and the new Hunter Water Corporation building. Facilitating commercial activity in the Cottage Creek Precinct is part of Honeysuckle’s objective to encourage around-the-clock activity in the CBD, enabling this new hub on the harbour to become the gateway to the city of Newcastle. Honeysuckle Drive is set to become a premier boulevard in Newcastle with the view to Nobbys a major feature.

Back in Time

In Behind the Bellevue

When the Great Northern Railway was built across the shallows on the southern side of the estuary of the Hunter River in 1855, the first section of Cottage Creek Precinct was erected. Seventeen years later, when the Railways Department closed the original Honeysuckle Point Station (near modern Civic Station) and opened another of the same name about three quarters of a mile to the west, Cottage Creek Precinct acquired another function: henceforth it serviced as the transport centre of Newcastle West.

The precinct was still only a narrow strip of harbourside land, but early in this century, as Lee Wharf was extended to the west, there was further reclamation and more valuable land was created. As well as the inflammable liquids wharf, there were the general cargo Lee wharves and, finally, the new stronger wharf known as Throsby 1.

Although all the precincts share, to some extent, the waterfront experience, the history of Cottage Creek Precinct was dominated by it. The struggle for better waterfront working conditions was fought out there and new technology in the form of roll-on-roll-off container ships changed the nature of waterside work.

The future development of Cottage Creek Precinct promises to introduce new functions and to add to the rich archaeological history of the area.

Source: summary from Honeysuckle Historical study by Dr J W Turner, 1994.