Newcastle Technical College Bushwalking and Alpine Club, now known as  Newcastle Bushwalking Club Inc. came into being on 12th September 1945, when a group of fourteen people with a mutual enthusiasm for "the bush", gathered at the inaugural meeting in Room 6 of the Clegg Building, Newcastle Technical College Tighes Hill.

The First Club Walk, 29^th & 30th September 1945, as recalled by Selby Alley

 

On V.P Day (15 August 1945) Dave Trevillien and I had hitchhiked as far as Kendall’s Monument south of Gosford, and the next day had uncomfortably scrambled along the range going north, to emerge in a serene bit of country which turned out to be the backyard of the viticulture station at Narara.

 

This walk in reverse was the first club walk on 29 & 30 September 1945.

 

About a dozen attended, leaving Newcastle by train at 1.45 pm on Saturday. The camp was in a good piece of bush behind the viticulture station. Next day we went on up the creek and across country to Somersby Falls, many of the party seeing, for the first time, waratahs and giant red lilies growing in their native bush.

 

In the following five weeks three more walks were planned, Mount View, Sweetman’s Creek and Black Dog. By 1947 there was a regular programme of activities.

An Early Walks Programme July, Aug, Sept 1947

 

July 19 - 20                               Woy Woy, Dillons Track, Patonga

July 27                                      Walk in the vicinity of Fassifern

August 9-10                              Hawkesbury River, Spencer, Foody Trig

August (Feature Night)               Illustrated lecture and moving pictures in the science building

August 23-24                             Gloucester, Barrington River, Gloucester Buckets

September 13-14                       Annual Camp – Myuna Bay

Your Club Badge, And How It Began, as recalled by Richard Grimmond in 1956

 

Back in the dim distant past, when sleeping bags were £3, in the era of the Kirkby -Parr -Silkman -Wasson - Grimmond- Jones -Charlton gang, we had no badge. One of our numbers claiming Scotch ancestry always sported a tartan hat band and the first Scotch Thistle encountered on the walk, as a trade mark, but this did not meet with universal approval, so for many years the idea of an emblem lay dormant. Then about '47 or '48 while at a Federation camp at George's River, Macquarie Fields, we became consciously aware of the fact that all the Sydney clubs had badges, and we didn't. So some serious thought was given to the matter.

 

The first ideas worked around Paddy's trademark of the Bushwalker with pack, but with the modification of a rocky, Barrington type track, so that the walker was climbing upwards. This was agreed upon, and I was given the job of drawing it for the next meeting (due to no special qualities other than possessing a tee square and a box of paints). So the badge was duly prepared, one with a black silhouette and a gold background and another with the gold walker and a black background, each 8 inches high and also each 1 inch. What a disappointment! Had it been the Notre Dame Club, it would have been appropriate, so that idea was dropped.

 

Next followed a deal of individual design. Darby Munro was 'up bush' (i.e. teaching at Kendall) at the time, but as vitally interested in the issue as the rest of us, and he sent down a design involving an aboriginal motif in the form of a ceremonial tree with the concentric diamond pattern.

 

AT LAST WE WERE GETTING SOMEWHERE.

 

The next design submitted was a large gum leaf draped across a pack with the letters N.T.C.B.W.C. along it. The idea of something on top of something seemed to appeal, when Iris Charlton suggested a boot print on top of a compass, and the tee square and box of paints produced it for us for the next meeting. At this meeting in November 1950, the black walker and pack, the aboriginal ceremonial tree, the gum leaf and pack, and boot print on compass were exhibited and voted upon.