Reshaping the Hunter
Reshaping The Hunter, a new book by award-winning local author Evan McHugh, takes a sweeping view of engineering in the Newcastle region over the last 40 years.
Subtitled How Engineering Innovation Reinvented a Region the book examines engineering's pivotal role in responding to significant economic and environmental challenges, including the Newcastle Earthquake in 1989 and closure of the BHP Steelworks in 1999. Featuring interviews with leading engineers and CEOs, what emerges is a community of professionals that is remarkably resilient, agile, and determined when it comes to solving the seemingly unsolvable.
Starting with indigenous engineering the development of the Port of Newcastle and the legacy of BHP, Reshaping the Hunter explores how extensive local engineering networks have underpinned the foundations of the region's prosperity. This includes a look at the city's globally competitive companies that have flourished throughout the years. Finally, the book explores future possibilities for a region with a proven record of adaptability as it faces its next great challenge: Australia's energy transition.
"Events like the Newcastle earthquake and the embrace of economic rationalism and globalism, leading to the closure of the BHP Steelworks, shipbuilding and other industries, were disastrous for the region on one level, but transformative of engineering on another," says Evan McHugh.
"In writing this book – it was clear to me that that a most striking aspect of this story is the way engineers have continually responded and adapted to changing circumstances with innovative solutions — those who didn't change disappeared.
Reshaping the Hunter is a 168-page soft cover full-colour publication, retailing for $40.00 (incl gst).
It can be purchased online here
Evan McHugh is an award-winning author who has written for everything from the London Times and National Geographic to The Australian and Brisbane Courier. He wrote the Official Guide to Sydney for the 2000 Olympic Games. He has written nineteen books; his National Geographic Sydney won the PATA Award for Best Travel Guide in the Asia-Pacific and Red Centre, Dark Heart won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Non-Fiction. Evan is 57, was born in Sydney and has been based in the Hunter Region since 2009, where he has embraced its rich agricultural, viticultural, and industrial diversity.
This project is supported by Create NSW's Cultural Grants Program, a devoted funding program administered by the Royal Australian Historical Society on behalf of the NSW Government, and ARTC, UoN, Ampcontrol, IS Systems, PWCS, Northrop, GHD, Douglas Partners, Safearth Consulting, Lindsay & Dynan, Varley.
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