Watersedge

Watersedge Motel on The Boulevard, Woy Woy. Just round the corner from the railway station, just across the road (at the back) from the ferry wharf and Pelican Island and halfway between the two pubs.

At first glance this is just another eighties building. I thought so the first time I saw it but then I noticed the old-fashioned factory style windows across the front (first floor) and the old windows and doorways down the side.

I looked it up on my next visit to the eyrie of Librarian Geoff (Gosford Library's Local Studies person) and indeed it is an ex-factory. The Super Fit Clothing Company opened there in 1947, just after the war, and closed in or after 1965-66.

The shop on its right is Huckleberry Finn's, the old fish & chip shop, and the Bay View Hotel carpark is on its left.

Michael gave me a lot of extra info (scroll to end of Huck Finn link), including that before it housed the motel the Watersedge building housed a wee arcade of shops and there was a supermarket opposite it near where the pawn shop on the corner of The Boulevard and Chambers Place.

When I've finished getting photos of all the Woy Woy shops we'll be able to clearly see where the tide of time has washed the shoppers away from The Boulevard and into Blackwall Road and George Street (Deepwater Plaza).

Despite local rumours to the contrary, this building was never the old slipper factory. That was where the extension to Deepwater Plaze is now on Railway Street. It was a beautiful old hotel before it was the slipper factory but there are no known photos of it. Bit of a bugger.


Wowers*

At the bottom of this blog there's thingy showing the number of visitors to this site. When I click I can see what countries those visitors come from. I used to get a trickle of readers from India, Pakistan and China.


(1989: Massacre in Tiananmen Square)

China blocks what it doesn't like on the net. I watched sadly as my Chinese visitors stopped coming and their government made their world smaller.

I'd got only one or two Pakistani visitors and I didn't really notice them not coming anymore. Then my Indian visitors stopped coming too. Apparently the whole of Blogger.com (anyblog.blogspot.com) has been banned by India, Pakistan and China.

But yesterday I found this anti-blocker:






By putting this on my website visitors from banning countries can surf on in then surf on out via any blogspot link in my sidebar. Apparently some corporations aren't onto it yet so you can also use it to get to Blogger sites from work.