Cessnock, New South Wales, Australia

🇦🇺 Cessnock is a city in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, Australia, about 52 km (32 mi) by road west of Newcastle. It is the administrative centre of the City of Cessnock LGA and was named after an 1826 grant of land called Cessnock Estate, which was owned by John Campbell. The local area was once known as "The Coalfields", and it is the gateway city to the vineyards of the Hunter Valley, which includes Pokolbin, Mount View, Lovedale, Broke, Rothbury, and Branxton.

History The Wonnarua people are the traditional owners of the Cessnock area. Many were killed or died as a result of European diseases after colonisation. Others were forced onto neighbouring tribal territory and killed. The city of Cessnock features many Indigenous place names including Congewai, Kurri Kurri, Laguna, Nulkaba and Wollombi.

Lying between Australia's earliest European settlements – Sydney, the Hawkesbury River and Newcastle, pastoralists commenced settlement of the land in the 1820s. Cessnock was named by Scottish settler John Campbell, after his grandfather's baronial Cessnock Castle in Galston, East Ayrshire, to reflect the aristocratic heritage and ambitions for this estate. The township of Cessnock developed from 1850, as a service centre at the junction of the Great North Road from Sydney to the Hunter Valley, with branches to Maitland and Singleton.

The establishment of the South Maitland coalfields generated extensive land settlement between 1903 and 1923. The current pattern of urban development, transport routes and industrial landscape was laid at this time. The surveying of the Greta coal seam by Professor Edgeworth David around 1888 became the impetus for considerable social and economic change in the area with the development of the coal mining industry.

Demographics According to the 2021 census, there were 63,632 people in the Cessnock LGA. • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made up 10.2% of the population. • 87.9% of people were born in Australia. The next most common countries of birth were England 1.9%, New Zealand 1.0% and Philippines 0.5%. • 90.1% of people spoke only English at home. • The most common responses for religion were No Religion 41.1%, Anglican 19.2% and Catholic 17.7%.

Economy The decline of mining on the South Maitland Coalfields has been paralleled by growth in the wine industry and better access to other employment centres.

The Hunter Valley wine-growing area near Cessnock is Australia's oldest wine region and one of the most famous, with around 1,800 hectares (4,448 acres) under vine. The vineyards of Pokolbin, Mount View and Allandale, with their rich volcanic soils tended by entrepreneurial vignerons, are also the focus of a thriving and growing tourism industry. The extension and eventual completion of the F3 Freeway, created a property and tourism boom during the 1990s.

Cessnock has begun to develop other tourist ventures beyond the wine industry such as championship golf courses, hot air ballooning, sky-diving, and guest house accommodation.

The city council has actively pursued a policy of urban renewal in the city centre since 2001. The local council was one of the first to introduce a recycling program for waste disposal in the state.

Most employment comes from the local port city of Newcastle, the nearby major centres of Maitland and Singleton and in service industries in the local council area, which comprises many small towns, such as Kurri Kurri, Weston, Neath, Abernethy, Kearsley and Pokolbin.

Geography The town is located in the rich alluvial and volcanic soils of the Hunter Valley. Rich coal seams underlie much of the area. The Brokenback Range (part of the Great Dividing Range) rises to the west of the city. The Hunter River flows down the Hunter Valley approximately 20 km (12 mi) to the north. Cessnock lies within the Hunter Valley Important Bird Area.