Former East Maitland resident Stan Sykes has been at the helm of the Newcastle CD and Record Fair since 2003 and has seen it grow exponentially in popularity.

“It was firstly at Wickham for a couple of fairs before moving to its home of ten years, Uniting Church Hall on Beaumont Street, Hamilton,” Sykes says.

“I remember Newcastle having a fair in the early ‘90s which dropped off, I guess as vinyl became less available to buy.

“Fairs were still popular in Sydney and I just thought, ‘Hey, Newie and the Hunter Valley deserves a fair’ and just went for it.”

Sykes discovered a lack of vinyl dealers in the Hunter so he looked further afield to find stall holders. 

“In the early days it was a struggle to get a huge amount of local stallholders interested, probably because the interest had died out locally, so good people from Melbourne, the Blue Mountains and Sydney, who I got to know through the [other] fairs came up to Newie to team up with the interested local stallholders and the fair was born,” Sykes recalls.

“I’m happy to say a lot of those people still do the fair today.”

The fair includes thousands of very rare and collectible vinyl and CDs, and covers every genre from classic rock to indie-alternative, metal, dance, punk, reggae, soul, funk, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz and country.

The fair is on Sunday at Wesley Uniting Church Hall on Beaumont Street from 9am to 4pm and entry is $1.