Creatively confined

"DADDY'S spending his birthday in jail," the four-year-old's declaring to all and sundry as I run around hosing spot fires of speculation.

"DADDY'S spending his birthday in jail," the four-year-old's declaring to all and sundry as I run around hosing spot fires of speculation.

In everyone's faces: the aghast speculation, the struggle with politeness. She's absolutely right - we're in jail. Not just the chap but all of us. Newcastle's old colonial lockup, complete with iron padlocks and padded cells and a graffitied exercise yard with its grim outdoor bath. I've been offered a writer's residency in what's now a cultural centre and the tribe's tagging along for the experience. I struggle to type. If anyone gets any louder I'm locking up the lot of them and throwing away the key. Doh! Screams of exhilaration. You see, as a kid it's wildly exciting having the run of this place. We're all alone at night and are eager for some kind of paranormal experience but honestly, I think we've frightened away the resident ghost. Poor thing. We're that loud, there are lots of stone walls to echo off - and central Newcastle's awfully quiet.

Driving down the main drag on Sunday afternoon is like cruising along an abandoned film back lot; a scene from On The Beach as life leaks away from all populated areas. Don't get me wrong, Newcastle's booming, just not in its once-very-beautiful heart. It's enough to make the town burghers of its robust past weep. David Jones' windows are now blacked out and scrappy-dusty in their prized mall location. NSW's oldest theatre, the Victoria, is boarded up, the grand old dame just waiting for an ungagging, all her glory intact from fly tower to circle foyer. The magnificent wedding cake of a post office with its honeyed sandstone is insulted by hoardings and a wire fence topped by barbed wire. A lone white digger stands out the front, head bowed in solemnity and grief, as if contemplating an Australia lost. All the beautiful buildings, wilting and abandoned like so many Miss Havershams lost in their ghostly memories. The CBD feels like it's winding down, heartbreakingly, right under the council's nose.

The one beautifully maintained heritage building? The Town Hall, of course, that's overlooked a decade of depletion in this once proud hub of the mighty Hunter. The only people who seem to have any energy and dynamism amid the CBD's astonishing ennui are the camera-wielding parking inspectors, puffed with entitlement and the thrill of the kill. And that's part of the problem. There's three hours free parking at the Westfield 10 minutes' drive from here, but a world away in terms of bustling crowds. You can also get free parking at the very cool Darby Street precinct, the creative hub of the region. While in town I spend a lot of frustrating time hopping from CBD meter to meter (challenging with a baby in tow) and often the machines mysteriously don't want to read my card. I give up and head to Westfield. It's easier, and free.

But all is not lost. A dynamic little initiative called "Renew Newcastle" is fighting back, fuelled by a tide of Novacastrians aghast at what's happening as big businesses, health providers and major retailers abandon ship to outlying areas. The aim: to refuse to let a cherished CBD die around it. How? By encouraging artists and visionaries to revitalise empty retail spaces with pop-up shops, design collectives and galleries, drawing in people with quirkiness and originality and beauty. It feels like the cool people are taking over. The organisation's Marni Jackson says, "There've always been interesting things going on here, but we've brought them to the fore." Their passionate model for renewal is now being replicated in waning areas of Adelaide, Geelong, Townsville and Lismore.

Newcastle's CBD needs all the help it can get. I want it to be - as they say in these parts - as full as the last bus out of BHP on a Friday night. Let's start with an art gallery or library in the post office, right next to the ingeniously revived Lockup Cultural Centre. A new creative precinct for a very cool, arty city? Fabulous.