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- 1. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their new house in about 1913.
- 2. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their new house in about 1913: with mat surround
- 3. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their house in about 1913.
- 4. The balcony at Miss Porter's House suffered extensive earthquake damage
- 5. Geoff Horn standing at the gate of his cousins' house on the days after the earthquake
- 6. Both sides and the front of Miss Porter's House suffered extensive damage in the earthquake.
- 7. Miss Porter's House after earthquake damage bricks have been removed
- 8. Hazel Porter ('Miss Porter') in the fernery of her house, in the early 1990s.
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Newcastle on the day the earth shook
The Story Newcastle on the day the earth shook
Roland Bannister
The story of Newcastle's great earthquake of 28 December 1989 is graphically illustrated in reconstructed buildings across the city. Miss Porter's House Museum in Newcastle West is a monument to the quake. Photographs in the Museum's collection show the extensive damage to the house, and documents left by its long-time owners, Ella and Hazel Porter, remind us of the trauma of the event.
Now at the thirtieth anniversary of the quake we retell stories of our experience of the day the earth shook. Stories told by people who assisted the elderly Porter sisters in the aftermath of the disaster attest to the havoc it wrought on their much-loved home.
Leone Barnett tells of how she drove the eight anxious kilometres from her suburban home to her husband Don’s city workplace within about ten minutes of the quake. Don was an architect at the Water Board, and the Water Board was in King Street West, an area that suffered great devastation. 'There was virtually no traffic,' Leone says as she thankfully recalls the empty streets. People had left their cars, and there were no buses as local drivers were on strike. Leone made the best of her clear run. Where, she worried, was Don?
Groups of shaken people stood about on the road and median strip. Leone recognised Ella and Hazel Porter, whose house was next door to the Water Board, still in their dressing gowns, sitting on the kerb comforting their little dog, Cooee. Ella and Hazel knew Don and thought that he was still inside the Water Board building, but in fact he by this time was in a cherry picker, descending through the damaged roof of the Workers Club where he was to assess how the building might be entered for rescue purposes. Eventually nine bodies were recovered from the club.
The police were moving everybody out of damaged buildings, but Ella and Hazel were keen to get back into their house. Leone Barnett was concerned for their welfare, and after the emergency people gave permission, Don arranged for the women to enter their house, but only to retrieve some belongings.
Then the Barnetts generously invited the sisters to their own home, where they stayed two nights until friendly neighbours found them a rental house, where they would live for the next year. Five days after the quake Geoff Horn, a cousin of the sisters, and his mate, helped the women pack for their move to their temporary home. Geoff recalls his horror at the layers of dust across the interior, furniture flung about the floor, and 'seeing sunlight through the walls'.
Ella and Hazel soon began negotiations with the City Council and earthquake funding authorities in their effort to retain and restore their home. Papers they left in the house help us to follow their campaign.
In two draft letters Ella describes her and her sister’s emotional attachment to their house. They plea for a favourable decision from the insurance company, and for Council to allow them to restore their house, rather than commit it to the wreckers' hammers. In support of her insurance claim Ella explains that during their careful lives they had minimised insurance risks: the chance of fire damage to the house had been low as neither she nor Hazel ever smoked.
Their parents, Herbert and Florence (nee Jolly), had built the house before their marriage in 1910, and had lived there until Herbert’s untimely death from Spanish flu in 1919, and Florence’s death in 1970 at 91. In her letter to the Town Clerk, Ella tells of their parents' marriage and their new home, and proudly explains that her uncle Wallace Lintott Porter – a prominent Newcastle architect - had designed it. There is she says, 'a lot of sentiment attached to it'. Ella expresses concern that - since the outer layer of bricks had fallen in the quake - wind and rain had damaged the house, and when the chimneys were dismantled no covers were used, so soot and damp got into the rooms.
Mercantile Mutual eventually made an insurance payout, which together with a donation and a loan from the Lord Mayor's Earthquake Appeal, and some money of their own, enabled Ella and Hazel to meet their $115 000+ bill for much needed major repairs, and - importantly - recalls Leone, the installation of 'a real kitchen and an indoor toilet'. Eventually, on 28 December 1990 the Porter sisters, assisted by Don Barnett, returned home one year exactly since the earthquake.
Except for this one year - 1990 - the sisters had lived all of their lives in the house. They continued to live there until their deaths: Ella in 1995 at age 85 and Hazel in 1997 aged 83. Hazel bequeathed the property to the National Trust which then faced the challenge of preparing the building as a house museum. Ella and Hazel had found the job of tidying the nine decades of hoarded furniture and household possessions to their pre-earthquake neatness beyond them. This task was eventually accomplished by the Trust’s volunteers.
The sisters and their parents were proud of their house. While the building design itself is very much like that of many other terrace houses in Australian towns and cities, we can, in early photographs, admire the lovely detail on the front of the house, detail probably prescribed by Wallace Porter. In several pictures from earthquake times we see the damaged house, and later pictures confirm that some of the original detail was not restored after the quake.
Today, visitors to Miss Porter's House see the post-earthquake bricks and the original bricks end-to-end. They compare the original terracotta wall vents with the lighter 1990 models. And they wonder with amusement at the inconvenience of the outside toilet that still graces the backyard and thank the earthquake that the sisters enjoyed the comfort of a modern indoor toilet in their last years.
Miss Porter's House opens on the 2nd Sunday of each month (Feb-Dec) and Australia Day, from 1pm -4pm. Special visits and organised tours can be organised by appointment. Admission costs: Adults $10. Concession $8. Family $25. National Trust members and children under 5 free.
Roland Bannister is a volunteer at Miss Porter's House.
Photo captions
1. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their new house in about 1913. (Photo: Miss Porter's House collection. Photographer unknown)
2. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their new house in about 1913: with mat surround. (Photo: Miss Porter's House collection. Photographer unknown)
3. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their house in about 1913. (Photo: Miss Porter's House collection. Photographer unknown)
4. The balcony at Miss Porter's House suffered extensive earthquake damage. (Photo: Miss Porter's House collection. Photographer unknown)
5. Geoff Horn stand at the gate of his cousins' house on the days after the earthquake (Photo: courtesy Geoff Horn)
6. Both sides and the front of Miss Porter's House suffered extensive damage in the earthquake. (Photographer unknown)
7. Miss Porter's House after earthquake damage bricks have been removed (Photo: courtesy Geoff Horn).
8. Hazel Porter ('Miss Porter') in the fernery of her house, in the early 1990s. (Photo: Miss Porter's House collection).
Roland Bannister
Volunteer
Miss Porter’s House
PO Box 2358, Dangar NSW, 2309
02 4023 5384
0403 324 487
CreatorRoland Bannister
Roland Bannister
The story of Newcastle's great earthquake of 28 December 1989 is graphically illustrated in reconstructed buildings across the city. Miss Porter's House Museum in Newcastle West is a monument to the quake. Photographs in the Museum's collection show the extensive damage to the house, and documents left by its long-time owners, Ella and Hazel Porter, remind us of the trauma of the event.
Now at the thirtieth anniversary of the quake we retell stories of our experience of the day the earth shook. Stories told by people who assisted the elderly Porter sisters in the aftermath of the disaster attest to the havoc it wrought on their much-loved home.
Leone Barnett tells of how she drove the eight anxious kilometres from her suburban home to her husband Don’s city workplace within about ten minutes of the quake. Don was an architect at the Water Board, and the Water Board was in King Street West, an area that suffered great devastation. 'There was virtually no traffic,' Leone says as she thankfully recalls the empty streets. People had left their cars, and there were no buses as local drivers were on strike. Leone made the best of her clear run. Where, she worried, was Don?
Groups of shaken people stood about on the road and median strip. Leone recognised Ella and Hazel Porter, whose house was next door to the Water Board, still in their dressing gowns, sitting on the kerb comforting their little dog, Cooee. Ella and Hazel knew Don and thought that he was still inside the Water Board building, but in fact he by this time was in a cherry picker, descending through the damaged roof of the Workers Club where he was to assess how the building might be entered for rescue purposes. Eventually nine bodies were recovered from the club.
The police were moving everybody out of damaged buildings, but Ella and Hazel were keen to get back into their house. Leone Barnett was concerned for their welfare, and after the emergency people gave permission, Don arranged for the women to enter their house, but only to retrieve some belongings.
Then the Barnetts generously invited the sisters to their own home, where they stayed two nights until friendly neighbours found them a rental house, where they would live for the next year. Five days after the quake Geoff Horn, a cousin of the sisters, and his mate, helped the women pack for their move to their temporary home. Geoff recalls his horror at the layers of dust across the interior, furniture flung about the floor, and 'seeing sunlight through the walls'.
Ella and Hazel soon began negotiations with the City Council and earthquake funding authorities in their effort to retain and restore their home. Papers they left in the house help us to follow their campaign.
In two draft letters Ella describes her and her sister’s emotional attachment to their house. They plea for a favourable decision from the insurance company, and for Council to allow them to restore their house, rather than commit it to the wreckers' hammers. In support of her insurance claim Ella explains that during their careful lives they had minimised insurance risks: the chance of fire damage to the house had been low as neither she nor Hazel ever smoked.
Their parents, Herbert and Florence (nee Jolly), had built the house before their marriage in 1910, and had lived there until Herbert’s untimely death from Spanish flu in 1919, and Florence’s death in 1970 at 91. In her letter to the Town Clerk, Ella tells of their parents' marriage and their new home, and proudly explains that her uncle Wallace Lintott Porter – a prominent Newcastle architect - had designed it. There is she says, 'a lot of sentiment attached to it'. Ella expresses concern that - since the outer layer of bricks had fallen in the quake - wind and rain had damaged the house, and when the chimneys were dismantled no covers were used, so soot and damp got into the rooms.
Mercantile Mutual eventually made an insurance payout, which together with a donation and a loan from the Lord Mayor's Earthquake Appeal, and some money of their own, enabled Ella and Hazel to meet their $115 000+ bill for much needed major repairs, and - importantly - recalls Leone, the installation of 'a real kitchen and an indoor toilet'. Eventually, on 28 December 1990 the Porter sisters, assisted by Don Barnett, returned home one year exactly since the earthquake.
Except for this one year - 1990 - the sisters had lived all of their lives in the house. They continued to live there until their deaths: Ella in 1995 at age 85 and Hazel in 1997 aged 83. Hazel bequeathed the property to the National Trust which then faced the challenge of preparing the building as a house museum. Ella and Hazel had found the job of tidying the nine decades of hoarded furniture and household possessions to their pre-earthquake neatness beyond them. This task was eventually accomplished by the Trust’s volunteers.
The sisters and their parents were proud of their house. While the building design itself is very much like that of many other terrace houses in Australian towns and cities, we can, in early photographs, admire the lovely detail on the front of the house, detail probably prescribed by Wallace Porter. In several pictures from earthquake times we see the damaged house, and later pictures confirm that some of the original detail was not restored after the quake.
Today, visitors to Miss Porter's House see the post-earthquake bricks and the original bricks end-to-end. They compare the original terracotta wall vents with the lighter 1990 models. And they wonder with amusement at the inconvenience of the outside toilet that still graces the backyard and thank the earthquake that the sisters enjoyed the comfort of a modern indoor toilet in their last years.
Miss Porter's House opens on the 2nd Sunday of each month (Feb-Dec) and Australia Day, from 1pm -4pm. Special visits and organised tours can be organised by appointment. Admission costs: Adults $10. Concession $8. Family $25. National Trust members and children under 5 free.
Roland Bannister is a volunteer at Miss Porter's House.
Photo captions
1. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their new house in about 1913. (Photo: Miss Porter's House collection. Photographer unknown)
2. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their new house in about 1913: with mat surround. (Photo: Miss Porter's House collection. Photographer unknown)
3. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their house in about 1913. (Photo: Miss Porter's House collection. Photographer unknown)
4. The balcony at Miss Porter's House suffered extensive earthquake damage. (Photo: Miss Porter's House collection. Photographer unknown)
5. Geoff Horn stand at the gate of his cousins' house on the days after the earthquake (Photo: courtesy Geoff Horn)
6. Both sides and the front of Miss Porter's House suffered extensive damage in the earthquake. (Photographer unknown)
7. Miss Porter's House after earthquake damage bricks have been removed (Photo: courtesy Geoff Horn).
8. Hazel Porter ('Miss Porter') in the fernery of her house, in the early 1990s. (Photo: Miss Porter's House collection).
Roland Bannister
Volunteer
Miss Porter’s House
PO Box 2358, Dangar NSW, 2309
02 4023 5384
0403 324 487
CreatorRoland BannisterPhotograph
Relates to:
Images1. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their new house in about 1913.2. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their new house in about 1913: with mat surround3. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their house in about 1913. 4. The balcony at Miss Porter's House suffered extensive earthquake damage5. Geoff Horn standing at the gate of his cousins' house on the days after the earthquake6. Both sides and the front of Miss Porter's House suffered extensive damage in the earthquake.7. Miss Porter's House after earthquake damage bricks have been removed 8. Hazel Porter ('Miss Porter') in the fernery of her house, in the early 1990s.PeopleElla PorterHazel PorterPlaceMiss Porter's HouseKeywords Newcastle, NSWEarthquakesNewcastle Earthquake 1989
2. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their new house in about 1913: with mat surround3. Herbert and Ella Porter with their daughter Ella in front of their house in about 1913. 4. The balcony at Miss Porter's House suffered extensive earthquake damage5. Geoff Horn standing at the gate of his cousins' house on the days after the earthquake6. Both sides and the front of Miss Porter's House suffered extensive damage in the earthquake.7. Miss Porter's House after earthquake damage bricks have been removed 8. Hazel Porter ('Miss Porter') in the fernery of her house, in the early 1990s.PeopleElla PorterHazel PorterPlaceMiss Porter's HouseKeywords Newcastle, NSWEarthquakesNewcastle Earthquake 1989Roland Bannister, Newcastle on the day the earth shook. Living Histories, accessed 19/02/2026, https://livinghistories.newcastle.edu.au/nodes/view/100240