23Working in Wallsend
Air conditioning in Wallsend 2287
On a January afternoon the Bureau's station just down the road at Callaghan records half the wind of Nobbys and about four degrees more heat, and every Wallsend room is sized with that in mind.
Wallsend began as two coal towns, Wallsend and Plattsburg, linked by Nelson Street. Alexander Brown named it in the 1850s after a coal mining town in the north of England, and the Newcastle-Wallsend Coal Company's colliery opened in January 1861. Wallsend became a municipality of its own in 1874, and the two towns had joined up again by 1915. The 2021 census counted 13,244 people. Ironbark Creek runs through the town centre in a concrete channel, and in the storm of 8 June 2007 it overflowed and flooded homes and businesses in the middle of town. Hunter Water is set to widen 660 metres of that channel, with construction expected to start in 2027. The Bureau's Newcastle University station at Callaghan, a few kilometres east, averaged 29.5°C on January afternoons between 1998 and 2020, against 25.6°C at Nobbys, with a 3pm wind of 16.2 km/h to Nobbys' 33.2.