Newcastle is still a coal town but it's no longer hellish. Nor is it heaven; it's more interesting than that. The train from Sydney passes national park after park, hosts of ungainly trees punctuated by bays full of boats. Newcastle is the jumping-off point for the beautiful wine country of the Hunter Valley and the dolphin and whale-watching paradise of Port Stephens, but it is also the end of the line – the train chugs out to the eastern tip of a little promontory, cuddled on both sides by apricot beaches that make Sydney's overpopulated Bondi look like a hellhole, and deposits you in the strangest tourist destination it has ever been my luck to visit.