Maitland in the Lower Hunter Valley, threaded by the Hunter River — known, for an age, as the Coquun by its First People, the Wonnarua — and flanked by rugged uplands, has long stirred interest. Its landscape brims with evidence of the past and a shifting presence, an interplay that has unconsciously fashioned one of the most memorable places in Australia. Maitland is a district that wears its history in the face of its weathered buildings, grand and vernacular alike, and in the powerful stories that imbue its farmlands, coalfields, watercourses, wetlands, and the quiet of the bush.