We absolutely love Newcastle, Lake Mac and the Hunter Valley, and so do you guys! Ever wondered what the most popular suburbs are in Newie? Well we’ve done the numbers for you and come up with Newcastle's Top 5 most searched suburbs.
Cue the drum roll…

​5. Coming in at fifth place is Charlestown, centrally located just minutes from the shores of Lake Macquarie, Newcastle’s southern beaches and a mega shopping centre. Charlestown is convenient, yet family friendly and peaceful, with plenty of shopping, entertainment and coffee options at your fingertips. This includes our healthy fave, Mama P.

4. Newcastle. This inner city suburb has everything at its doorstep: cafes, beaches, bars and boutiques. With heaps of new developments springing up in recent years, there are more apartments options in Newcastle than ever, with everything from high-end penthouses through to entry level studio apartments. ​
Here you needn’t worry about having a car, you’ll be walking everywhere, which won’t necessarily be a bad thing. With so many local dining options, pounding the pavement will help ensure the kilos don’t creep on. Let’s go out for dessert and cocktails, again!

3. Tighes Hill, nestled between cosmopolitan Hamilton and up-and-coming Mayfield, Tighes Hill has a beautiful community vibe to it. Surrounded by bike paths, parklands and walking distance to some great cafes like Baked Uprising, Little Birdy and the main strip of shops in Islington. Tighes Hill strikes a wonderful balance between family friendly and inner city.
Out of the hustle and bustle, but close enough to the city that you can easily ride your bicycle to work, Tighes Hill rocks.

2. Perennially popular Merewether is without a doubt one of Newcastle’s most popular suburbs. With a Summer uniform of a bikini or boardies, Merewether is all about living the beach lifestyle. 
​With a quick surf before work or a sunset dip on a hot Summer’s night, Merewether offers a Summer holiday lifestyle just kilometres from the city. Coupled with plenty of options for eating out, like Blue Door on Merewether Beach, Surfhouse, The Burwood Inn and the classic Beaches Hotel to name a few. Plus Darby Street is within walking distance!

1. And the winner of Newcastle’s most popular suburb is Mayfield! Once an industrial, blue collar suburb, Mayfield has reinvented itself in recent years to become the go-to suburb for first home buyers. It’s just 10 minutes from the city and is full of beautiful period feature homes ripe for renovating.
Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that Mayfield has amazing cafes and some of the best coffee in Newcastle, including: Zaaki Espresso, Side Pocket, Locomotive,Portafilter, the Spanish tapas bar Barrio 2304,or the cheesy goodness of Pork Ewe Deli - the list goes on.
Mayfield sure is a delicious suburb to live in!
If you’re umming and ahhing between a contemporary Newie apartment, or a doer upper in Mayfield, speak to your local home loan experts at . Born and bred in the Hunter, they’ve been helping locals find their very own patch of God’s country for over 70 years.

On Friday 21st October, the Mayfield Business Association in partnership with Newcastle City Council held the inaugural Illuminate Mayfield Block Party. The evening was an outstanding success, celebrating music, art, food and community.

 Thanks to social media printer Click Tag Print, all these photos were taken on the night & uploaded to Instagram with the #IlluminateMayfield hashtag. Patrons could then go to the Click Tag Print
photo booth and pick up a FREE printed copy of their pic. It was a fantastic, very popular service - we highly recommend using Click Tag Print at your next event!

​On Monday 19 September ten lovely ladies from the Mayfield business community came together to update their skills in First Aid. This full day event gave the participants an opportunity to learn the latest in CPR including use of a defibrillator, how to deal with a multitude of potential accidents in the workplace and a good general knowledge of supporting injury through the use of bandages.
 
This was the first of a series of accredited skills training sessions that the Mayfield Business Association will be providing for its members. In October we will be offering two half day sessions in Digital Marketing. This is a great opportunity to learn how marketing your business through the use of digital platforms can be not only more effective to gain a greater reach of your potential customer but is the most cost effective form of advertising available.
 
Thank you to our new and existing members who participated in the training, the Stag & Hunter Hotel for providing the use of their boardroom and Hunter TAFE for a well delivered and enjoyable course!
 
For further information on our Digital Marketing training on the 17 & 24 October, please email membership@mayfield.asn.au or call Lee-Anne on 0405478560.

On the evening of Friday 21 October 2016 Mayfield will be celebrating the Illuminate Mayfield festival. It’s a free community-based event that will take place in the heart of Mayfield business shopping strip on Victoria Street. Local businesses and community organisations will host market stalls & pop up shops.
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Event organiser Rita Dixon of This Is Mayfield says “We invite our local residents and community members to join us for a fun after-work Friday evening celebrating art, music, food and a Projected Light Show on nearby buildings and structures. There will be a live band and dance floor, as well as the light show projections created by a group of Mayfield youths under the guidance of Hobo Techno.”

Illuminate Mayfield is a partnership project between Mayfield Business Association, Newcastle Council’s Make Your Place, and creatives HoboTechno.

Illuminate Mayfield very much fits the recent Mayfield Better Block festival ethos of Let’s Reimagine The Street. “Illuminate Mayfield overarches the concepts established as the core goals of the Mayfield Better Block, being A Safer, Vibrant Community, A Connected Community, and A Cleaner, Greener Community” says Ms. Dixon.

The Light Show Projection is a collaborative sub-project of its own. Ms. Dixon explains - “We have invited local community groups such as the local Indigenous, Islamic, schools and drop-in centres to nominate 12 young Mayfield residents between the ages of 13 & 18 to attend a fully-funded Creative Technology Workshop run by HoboTechno, teaching participants about creating Live Projection Mapping (LPM). LPM is the computer generated imagery that is projected onto buildings and surfaces at events such as Sydney’s Vivid Festival.” The creative outcomes of this workshop will be used in the projections that will enhance the Illuminate event on 21 October.

Illuminate Mayfield is a free event, from 6pm-10pm on Victoria Street Mayfield on 21st October. Ms. Dixon says “We encourage everyone to come along & wear something that Illuminates, either physically or metaphorically!”.

For more information, please visit our Events page!

​This Is Mayfield have partnered with Newcastle City Council Community Assistance Grant to on a video series project called Meeting Mayfield. Rita Dixon, Coordinator of the Mayfield Business Association says that the goal of Meeting Mayfield is to introduce the general public to the people behind the counters in Mayfield businesses via 30-50 second videos.

The videos are professionally shot and post-edited by Black Sheep Digital Media. Ms. Dixon says “the quality of work already completed is outstanding. We have had an unprecedented amount of positive feedback from our community after launching Meeting Mayfield via social media last month. There has been with hits and views in the tens of thousands to date!”
 
Meeting Mayfield is a free resource the Mayfield Business Association is providing to selected members. Ms. Dixon says that “Meeting Mayfield underpins our drive to encourage our local community to support their local business precincts.” Rita goes on to say that “…our local Mayfield business owners give so much back to their community, and we, as workers, shoppers or residents of this area need to support them by shopping locally to ensure that our local small businesses, and in turn our local shopping culture, thrives”.
 
Meeting Mayfield is an ongoing series, with more filming taking place this week for video releases later in the year. Check out the “Our 2304” page at www.thisismayfield.com to see the videos released to date – have you shopped at any of these businesses yet?

Rotary Club of Newcastle Enterprise have teamed up with Newcastle Council Make Your Place to install an interactive piece of street art at Mayfield West! A pre-loved piano has been given a new lease of life, having been repurposed as Street Art to bring music and colour to the arty and multicultural little shopping strip of creative and quirky shops.

Julia Brougham, of Rotary Club Newcastle Enterprise says “We invite one and all to come and play the Mayfield Street Piano anytime! It’s located at 400 Maitland Road Mayfield West. We have provided a wo comfy chair and laminated sheets of simple music.”

Rita Dixon, Coordinator of the Mayfield Business Association says the business community of Mayfield fully supports this creative initiative. “It’s wonderful to see our community members sharing their love of music and enjoying practicing their (sometimes rusty!) keyboard skills. Creating music is a wonderful thing, and being given the opportunity to share it is truly a gift to our community”.
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Ms. Brougham of Rotary assures us that every person is welcome to enjoy the street piano, whether you are a virtuoso or have never touched a piano before. While you are at Mayfield West, why not pop into a few of the shops and businesses to see what they have - great coffee, indigenous art, treasures and antiquities. You could get a Quickcut haircut or even a tattoo removed! Of course satisfying your appetite at Mayfield West Kebabs or The Bhakti Tree is a must! 

Mayfield's first grass-roots urban revitalisation Better Block, took place in the sunshine on Saturday 21 May and it was a grand success! The Mayfield Business Association (This Is Mayfield), in collaboration with CycleSafe Network and Remake Creative Resource Centre, hosted a fantastic community event that was very well attended by locals and the greater Newcastle community alike. The Mayfield Better Block showcased the talents of Mayfield businesses, residents and community organisations.

Opened by the Awabakal singer/dancers, it was a thoroughly enjoyable day that showcased many Mayfield business, talent and organisations. In a celebration of our wonderful cultural diversity here in Mayfield, there was a myriad of delicious, mouthwatering foods on offer from the Islamic Centre (who also hosted an open day all day), The Bhakti Tree, Rotary Club of Newcastle Enterprise, A Little Bit Of Spain and Afghani Kebabs.

Mayfield's own England Purton Dance Academy provided 3 dance shows, and local young talent Olivia and Bailey Clarke as well as Zac Sharah entertained us all day with their beautiful music from the custom-made stage that was hand built by the Waratah Mayfield Men's Shed & painted by local artist Jessica Miller. Mayfield's own The Bhakti Tree cafe even led us in public Kirtan and meditation!

Punters lazed around on arm chairs in the middle of the closed-to-traffic Victoria Street and under the new Thomas Jackson mural on the gorgeous greenspace. The Victoria Street greenspace was cleared, cleaned, repaired & tidied by Newcastle City Council & the mural made possible by an NCC Make Your Own Place grant.

We had a great lineup of guest speakers educating us on a range of interesting topics:

• William Vorbioff from Transition Streets talked about creating a sustainable future in your neighbourhood.
• Mel Duffy-Fagan from Remake Creative Resource Centre spoke about opportunities for using recycled materials in early education.
• Cathy Stuart of Newcastle Upcyclers talked about - well, upcycling in Newcastle!
• Lachlan Storrie of Mayfield's Tree Frog Permaculture spoke about transforming urban space.
• Michelle Roach of Mayfield's Beanstalk Organic Co-Op spoke about "food is community".
• Megan Sharkey of the CycleSafe Network talked about Better Blocks, and Mayfield's engagement to create safe walking/biking/shared pathways in our suburb.

There were stalls featuring a great range of local businesses and organisations:

• Transition Newcastle were talking to many people about transforming neighbourhoods, and how we can do that right here in Mayfield.
• QuickCuts of Mayfield West hosted a pop-up barber shop on Victoria Street and were kept very busy all day making our gents of Mayfield beard-iful!
• Newcastle Upcyclers hosted workshops all day upcycling and reusing materials into new and exciting forms.
• Rotary Club of Newcastle Enterprise held a Monster Garage Sale and BBQ on the roof of the Ironworkers building
• Newy Ventures of Eighteen04 (a clean tech co-working space based in the CSIRO at Steel River) hosted a stall educating & informing our guests and residents on some of the wonderful and amazing advances in Smart Cities technology that is coming out of very clever teams in our Mayfield!
• Beanstalk Organic Co-Op were selling gorgeous organic fresh produce, grown by local farmers, as well as letting everyone know about membership to their Church St Mayfield based Co-Op.
• ReMake Creative Reuse Centre hosted a kids play and activity area that was very popular indeed!
• Local artist Jessica Miller offered free facepainting for the kiddies, and local youth Ewan sold icy cold drinks.
• The Ethnic Communities Council had a multi-faceted stall, featuring produce from their community garden, the ECC and the Men's Shed.
• Mayfield's Tree Frog Permaculture held hands-on workshops all day, demonstrating how to weave banana leaf fibre (from leaves chopped down right there in the greenspace), and making "insect hotels" - or native bee habitats to be hung in local gardens.
• CycleSafe Network hosted valet bike parking and free bike maintenance, as well as provided really interesting maps & information about cycle pathways n Mayfield and Newcastle.

​Mayfield's Acrobat Removals assisted greatly by loaning and transporting furniture & materials to transform Victoria Street and the Dora St carpark into social leisure spaces with lounges, flooring and games. Many local residents volunteered their time, expertise and energy to bring the Mayfield Better Block to you - we say a very , very special thank you to them.

We are excited and delighted about the success of the first Mayfield Better Block, and we hope it will be the first in many collaborative urban revitalisation projects hosted by The Mayfield Business Association. Would you like to be involved in our next adventure? Let us know by completing this contact form below:

Mayfield Business Association is leading the charge in environmental & community responsibility by becoming part of a growing, international movement known as Better Block and will host “Mayfield Better Block,” the first event of its kind in Newcastle, on Saturday 21st May at Victoria St & Maitland Rd from 10 - 4pm.
Better Block was a concept co-created by Jason Roberts, a native Texan who, in 2010, organised a series of “Better Block” demonstrations, taking blighted blocks with vacant properties in Southern Dallas and converting them into temporary walkable districts with popup businesses, bike lanes, cafe seating, and landscaping. The project has now become an international movement and has been featured in the New York Times and Ted Talks. Events have been held all over the world including Tehran and Melbourne.

Do you work in an organisation or business in Mayfield, or that services the Mayfield area?
Join us on May 11 to enjoy a relaxed before-work get together.
Enjoy a delicious breakfast made fresh by our hosts The Bhakti Tree Vegetarian Café, while catching up with other business managers and local representatives from right here in Mayfield.