The Cockatoo ferry

(Random walkies)



Here she is coming round ready to sidle up to the wharf.

That's Brisbane Water Drive and Parks Bay/Koolewong in the background and we're looking north-north-west.

The white boat is called Up & Down. Someone painted a pair of heterosexuals demonstrating this motion on the back but it got scrubbed off.



She's sidling up to the wharf here, ensign flying in the breeze. The best seats are up there on the aft deck on that bench you can see across the back.

That's Pelican Island in the background and we're looking north-north-east.



Licensed to carry 51 persons. That's what it says above the doorway. 49 passengers and 2 crew.



That's her flue going up the middle there. You can see it come out the top deck in the yellow paint.

She's a game old thing. She putts slowly along and her engine throbs like buggery crossing from the shelter of Pelican Island to Lintern Channel but she gets there and it's a nice ride.

She was built around 1945, at the end of World War Two, and worked for the defence forces in Sydney Harbour. She probably looked a lot like the Gladstone then. She is 40 feet long, her beam is 12 feet and her draft is 5 feet. Draft is how far below the water her lowest point is and beam is how wide she is from side to side. Her displacement is 16 tonnes.

There's more about her on the Hardys Bay site and a map below showing Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour.



Here she is cheek to cheek with her stablemate Saratoga at the Woy Woy wharf. They're both in the Central Coast Ferries fleet.



She's known as the Cockatoo ferry because she comes from Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. That's Cockatoo Island in solid black.

The island now belongs to the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust and they only let it off the leash for the yearly Cockatoo Island Festival. They're still doing it up. It was made into a dockyard in the mid 19th century, using convict labour. Before that it was a grain store for a bit and before that it was part of HM Prisons. Captain Thunderbolt, one of our colonial bushrangers escaped it when his missus swam across to rescue him.

The Slightly Wobbly Print(TM) says "Sydney CDB" (Sydney Central Business District). That's where the Coathanger (Sydney Harbour Bridge) and the Opera House are and where the first white settlers settled in 1788. Back then it was referred to as Port Jackson and the harbour still bears that name.

The other islands are, from bottom left to mid right, Rodd, Spectacle, (Cockatoo), Goat, Pinchgut/Fort Denison and Clarke. Shark Island is out of frame to right of Clarke.

By the way

The Coathanger is 75 this March by the way. Be there or be square.


Beautiful cooling rain

Last night it rained and it's raining again now. I stood out on my balcony in it last night. It hadn't rained for a while so the scent of it was beautiful. My orange jessamine was flowering. The two scents mingled and I stood there for yonks just drinking them in, with the rain falling on my skin and tapping on the trees. It rained all night I think and today is gloriously cool.

They may not feel the same in Campbelltown, particularly not the poor bastard who got squished by a tree, and Queenslanders will probably be quite glad of a dry spell after the cyclone weather. Particularly those still drying out from Larry last year.

World Wide Weird

Don't do drugs, man. You might mistake a person for a rodent. It's probably not a good idea to bite random straight guys in nightclubs either.