When composition surpasses content
We take too many photos to publish, so we created this little gallery for our favourites that impart the ‘atmosphere’ of GraffitiJunction’s home, Newcastle.
Your photos are welcome too. Include a brief description of the locale, and the attribution you want published, including URL, email, name, tag, if you wish, and make it clear which details you want shown with the image.
PS: After sorting all that, don’t forget to attach the image:0) to your email, that must be addressed to gjman at graffitijunction dot com (make that into a real email address please ~ we do that to confuse the email harvesting bots).
** Oh, and see here about IMAGE SIZES before emailing!!
Cambridge Pub - rear wall
This Hunter Street west-end pub (behind wall at left) has neighbours of distinction, like the the old Store across the road, and former Newcastle Museum ( in background) housed in a once famous brewery.
View full scene as image in web browser - ** Caution - 3.6MB - long time to open [better to right-click, save image] 
Download MS Windows postcard - requires ‘unzipping’ - 2.8MB 
Download Quicktime .mov - 2.7MB
Webb Park, Mayfield
Venue of Christmas Carols by Candlelight, and a murder - a sad wanderer, not the songs.
Too small to play footy, too big for a front lawn.
Newcastle City Council designated this graffiti wall, often carrying some of the best work on this web site.
Below - in the 50s.
Tighes Hill Railway Bridge
Pacific Highway north from Newcastle rounds the TAFE college at Tighes Hill and passes over rail lines once feeding industry but now sending Hunter Valley coal to the world.
Over that bridge is Mayfield, last stop out of town.
Left: View from college car park
Below: View south from bridge with TAFE college on left.
Shoal Bay Loo
Shoal Bay is part of magnificent Port Stephens and is first beach on the left going in. Tomaree peninsula in distance.
I did no go into this particular toilet due to the aggressive stance of the graffito creatures.
Right: Like this bloke
Palais - Wo! - Newcastle West, Hunter Street
The illustrated building [as in Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man"]
Till 2006 a legal graffiti location and youth venue. Vacated, it now languishes awaiting a master plan while a medical centre is constructed nearby [2007]. Above, eastern side, while the dank mysterious western facade is known to keep travellers in the hotel next door awake at nights.
Hunter Street, Newcastle West, Opposite School of Arts
Or "The Y’arts" as Sir Les Patterson annunciates ‘em.
This classily-refurbished commercial building formed the centre piece of an elegant arcade, but has lain idle for the last ten years. It is 
comprehensively occupied by either art students or extremely creative rats.
All the shop windows display experimental work, even the pillars out front form part of this vibrant studio. It’s sprouting three-dimensional art on exterior surfaces; given time I believe it will consume and reinvent itself.
Don’t know how much longer this can go on, but for now it’s Newcastle’s perennial "This Really Is Art" festival in a nutshell.
It’s a funny old world.
Newcastle South Beach - before the agreement!
The "agreement" was to stop bombing and decaling the buildings, fences, and structures, and stay wit the wall. Or council would ban the area to artists and patrol it.
Ladies change room. And you should see the "MEN’S"
View full scene as image in web browser - 1.2MB - long time to open [better to right-click, save image] Download MS Windows postcard - requires ‘unzipping’ - 1.4MB
Love Shack - King Street, Newcastle West
If this hasn’t got "ambiance" what has?
Maybe not so much ambiance as, well, a hard-working atmosphere, a well-worked alley.
Note the profusion of plumbing, lights, camera, infra/uv light beam, the bin for … , the aircon - but most oddly, what’s with the "NO STOPPING" sign? That should restrict business.
If you spot a bunch of merchant sailors off some coal ship in the west end, give ‘em a wide berth, because as sure as Newcastle’s a coal port they’re gonna ask where the Love Shack is.
I’m just filling space because this is a really tall photo.
King Street Steps - Newcastle City
Gully Line - Broadmeadow
Now that’s ambiance!
This drainage canal draws water from Kotara hills to the Throsby.
One of Newcastle’s oldest graffiti spots, it was adorned in the late sixties by such epics as "No French A-Tests"
Above and left, the only worked areas, which surprisingly haven’t grown.
Far top photo is under the road.
Broadmeadow Railway Overpass
A mile east of Gully Line is the south rail link to Sydney and the massive Broadmeadow rail yards.
Formerly a coal handling facility and loco workshops it now supports a vigorous rail maintenance team who spend most of their time fixing the rails and wondering where the trains are.
Lambton Road passes over the rail link and is the main west artery to inner suburbs and Lake Macquarie.
Left is footpath of underpass road beside railway. A loveable spot, one of Newcastle’s tourist attractions, just metres from Broadmeadow Station.
As you gather, Broadmeadow Railway Station stands premier as gateway to Newcastle.
Dereliction is to the advantage of souls like GJMan.
Being mostly out of sight - though the buses pass by carting passengers to and from Broadmeadow Station, this tunnel is a time capsule.
Dark and not easily noticed. Cleaning it up would render sterile the foreboding atmosphere that becomes magic in photography.
GJMan is on the hunt for old graffiti - BEFORE it was graffiti. And this morning (24th Feb 07) I found some!!
Forty years ago "No French H-Tests" splashed key locations around Newcastle - visible from the top of my ride, a Government double-decker bus.
And look, it’s still preserved here …
If only that was a Peugeot!!
Bank Corner - Hunter Street, Newcastle West
No story, just ‘ambiance.’
Off King Street, Newcastle City
Not so much ambiance, as atmosphere. And one of my favourite ‘billboard’ graffito.
Lane off Hunter Street West
