Update: Late in 2021 the NSW Government Historical Imagery website added aerial imagery for the Newcastle area for the years 1944, 1954 and 1966. This includes much aerial imagery that is not part of what I have indexed below, but conversely there are aerial images in my index that are not yet included in the NSW Historical Imagery site.

The University of Newcastle Cultural Collections photo archive on Flickr contains approximately 700 historical aerial photographs of the Newcastle and Hunter area.

To make these photographs easier to locate, I have constructed a ‘visual index’ using Google Maps. Each rectangle is an aerial run of photographs, with each star marking the centre point of a photograph on that run. Click on a star to see a link to the corresponding photograph. Bear in mind that the orientation of the photographs in the archive is not always the ‘up is north’ convention we expect. For example, in the Newcastle area there are three series of photographs in the index:

• 1954,  1 run, 14 photos. Rotate photos left by 90 degrees to view with north up.
• 1966, 6 runs, 101 photos. Rotate photos from runs 1, 3 and 5 by 180 degrees to view with north up.
• 1971, 1 run, 16 photos.

Other areas covered by the index are:

• 1944, 9 runs (Upper Hunter/Barringtons)
• 1951, 3 runs (Burrendong)
• 1952, 2 runs (Bulahdelah)
• 1958-59, 5 runs (Upper Hunter)
• 1960, 3 runs (Barringtons)
• 1967, 6 runs (Upper Hunter)
• 1971, 2 runs (Bulahdelah)
• 1972, 2 runs (Upper Hunter, Burning Mountain)
• 1974, 1 run (Jerrys Plains)
• 1982, 1 run (Muswellbrook)

You can view the visual index in full-screen mode, or use the embedded map below.

See also my visual index to historical real estate maps.