AFTER living in Newcastle for 22 years former ABC Radio presenter Carol Duncan is still not sure if she is considered a Novocastrian.
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“They say you need at least two sets of grandparents at Sandgate Cemetery to be a local,” Duncan said.
But if the status of being considered a Newcastle local is something one can earn, Duncan, a former Sydneysider, is well on her way.
In August 2012 while at the helm of ABC Radio 1233’s afternoon show, she created a Facebook page – a place to upload some of the interesting and sometimes mysterious photos she had taken of Newcastle.
That extraordinary emotion people share from reconnecting with people they had thought they had lost forever.
- Carol Duncan
“The idea was that we all know the iconic photos of Newcastle, but what I wanted was for people to share other photos, family photos. Photos of their people in their city,” Duncan said.
The group started with a few hundred members, but by Easter of the following year it had grown to a few thousand. There are now more than 21,000 members, or “losties” as Duncan affectionately calls them.
The very active group has become home to a huge collection of historic photos of Newcastle and the Hunter Valley all shared by its members.
But its greatest reward for Duncan has been an unexpected one.
“There have been reunions and discoveries of lost loved ones,” she said.
“That has been the most wonderful and powerful thing for me.
“A picture of two young girls in their kinder class in 1946, they hadn’t seen each other since.”
But through Lost Newcastle the pair were reunited after nearly 70 years.
“That extraordinary emotion people share from reconnecting with people they had thought they had lost forever,” Duncan said.
“I didn’t expect that.”