Speers Point Park was gazetted in 1887 as Lake Macquarie Park, and miners’ families from the Wallsend and Plattsburg coalfields camped there for weeks at Christmas. Council’s history records that in 1917, with a small canvas town in the park, sanitary arrangements were rudimentary and council paid for improvements. The first subdivision of the suburb came in 1902, and sewerage in 1945. A house from the early lots was built decades before the sewer, so a renovation there starts with finding out where its drain was connected.
Properties in Speers Point are among those in the NSW EPA’s Lead Abatement Strategy Area, which covers land the EPA considers potentially contaminated by lead from the former Pasminco smelter at Boolaroo. Before a job that digs, look up the address on the EPA’s map and read its guidance on soil from those properties: NSW EPA: lead soil disposal for Lake Macquarie residents.