Wednesday, December 13, 2006

The Joyce

(Random walkies)

Lovely storm the other night. Storms rather. They crashed, rattled and rolled overhead all evening and brought some nice cool wet rain. Magic.

Point Clare Cemetery Coolarn Avenue Point Clare

Popped up to Point Clare Cemetery this morning. This is the entrance. It's a pleasant little cemetery near Gosford. Turn off Brisbane Water Drive at the Point Clare ambo station (beige green 70s building, ambulance in the window). You'll see the cemetery almost immediately after the turn on your right.

Joyce Memorial Point Clare Cemetery Coolarn Avenue Point Clare

Memorial for seven men from the old Nielsen Slipper Factory in Woy Woy. The factory's gone now but was where the Deepwater Plaza extension is now on Railway Street.

In May 1948 they went out for a weekend fishing trip on the Joyce, a 22 foot cabin launch. On the Sunday a strong wind came up. It was described as possibly the strongest wind in 10 years.

On the Monday morning two launches were missing, the Joyce and the Syd, carrying a total of 11 people. Neither boat was ever found and there were no survivors. A memorial to the factory men was erected outside the factory in Railway Street Woy Woy. It was moved from there around the 1960s and ended up at Point Clare a few years later.

More detail at the Library website.

The memorial reads:

"This memorial
is erected to the
memory of
the 7 employees
who lost their lives
in the launch "Joyce"
15th May 1948
by
C.P. & R. Nielsen Pty. Ltd.
Employees & Relatives
-----
Arthur Bowler
Robert Hayes
Norman John Tolley
Peter Proudfoot
Cyril Law
Norman Eric Lester
Brian Morris Parsons."

Point Clare Cemetery Coolarn Avenue Point Clare

Looking east-south-east from near the front end to the back. It's about twice as wide as what you can see here. Not a huge cemetery, rather nice though.

Kariong is on the other side of that ridge.

Point Clare Cemetery Coolarn Avenue Point Clare

Location Map for the whole cemetery. The brown section on the left is the most active area now. Most or all of the other graves spots are full.

I've been getting bugger-all walkies down this last couple of months. Had a rush of work. Hideous stuff work.

Bushfires

Those fires in Vic joined up. The front is now around 250 kays (155.34 miles) long. Very bad. Plus the Blue Mountains fires are still going and there's bad ones in Tassie (Tasmania) and some evil prick lit one on the outskirts of Perth in Western Australia. There's also been some fires started by the storms around Sydney and one up near Wyong further up the NSW Central Coast.

No fires near me since New Year's Day. I got me fingers crossed there won't be all summer.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Hideous stuff work"

Could not agree more, it gets in the way of life all too often.

Anonymous said...

Fingers crossed indeed. Those arsonists should be locked up and throw away the key. That man who died, fell off a trailer fleeing the fires, was a local legend. Last week Melbourne was under a pall of smoke.

Spike said...

Shit yeah. They oughta be bunged in solitary, the wankers. There's enough fucking fires without some evil toerag adding to them.

Saw a snippet of that on the news. Poor bastard. At least he didn't get burnt.

Spike said...

Aesthetic, if it weren't for all them bloody bills I'd chuck it in tomorrow :)