Bustling Downtown Woy Woy

Some photos I've been meaning to post for a while. Bustling Downtown Woy Woy stuff. The three by two block area around the railway station that is Woy Woy's central business district.



Blackwall Road, opposite Woolies (Woolworths), near the Library and next to the wee brick church.

The Talk of the Town/Optometrist/Florist building is all the same brick and has 1940s windows on the top left hand side. The seventies windows and the white brick on the top right hand side I'm guessing enclose a nice sunny veranda that served the flat upstairs when it was a flat upstairs and not an office as it probably is now.

The Tonkin Drysdale Partners building there on the left is pure seventies. Hideous. If I remember right the back is pure seventies as well so either the land was vacant or they pulled something down to build that.

Out of frame on the left is a small arcade-y type building with a shoe shop and some offices upstairs. On the right edge of the photo you can see a bit of the Westpac bank.



Chambers Real Estate Blackwall Road Woy Woy. Opposite the Library and Oval Avenue, next to the travel agent (out of frame right) and Checka's bakery (Colonial Village Bakery, out of frame left). Chambers is also the name of the street Oval Avenue joins up with.

I like this one. Inter-War Functionalist (circa 1915 - c. 1940) is what I'm thinking. There's not much to go on but those stripes in the brickwork say Inter-War Functionalist to me.



Clocktower Building Railway Street Woy Woy. Not my cup of tea at all. Well, okay, I like clock towers just not the building holding this one up. Too bloody eighties and I'm hating the proportions at the bottom. The bloody thing looks like it's teetering on its toes.

Having thoroughly dissed it I have to admit its footbridge (the overhead bit to the right) is bloody useful when one is headed across to Deepwater (Deepwater Plaza) in hot or rainy weather.

See that graffitti on the tower? Bloody taggers get into the engine room (or whatever the techo word is) on their way to tagging the tower and they interfere with the clock mecahanism. It's pretty good now but a couple of years back locals would be tapping tourists who'd just looked at the clock on the shoulder and warning them it said a different time on each face.

Those looking from the train can see the Clocktower easily and see where the footbridge continues out the back of the building and across to the carpark.



A little row of shops directly opposite the railway station in Railway Street. The fish-measurers used to have their fish-n-chip shop where Mortgage Choice is now. The veranda and balcony on Mortgage Choice and the dentist is not old. It went up last year or the year before. I find it quite pleasing to the eye and excellent shade on a hot summer day.

The shop under the number 18 used to hold some place selling glitter and flounces, possibly for ballet. I think it moved to Gosford. What the red shop held is on the tip of my tongue (or the tip of my fingers since I'm typing). Might've been a plonk shop (wine shop) but don't quote me on that.

Note the bike shop. They moved to this shop after a fire in their previous shop 50 metres to the left of this photo.

For now I'm putting the style of this wee row of shops down as Inter-War Free Classical (circa 1915 - c. 1940) due to the symmetry and the age of the materials. Keen-eyed readers will have noticed the old bricks down the side if the building (right hand edge of photo) and noticed that althought the beige section appears fairly young you can see from the age of the side and the shape of the facade at the top that's it's just been fiddled. In fact, it was fiddled with last year, as you can see in the Railway Street photo.


Tsunami fails to demolish Woy Woy

Yesterday there was a tsunami warning from Far North Queensland to Sydney. In Queensland they scarpered into the hills, in Sydney the life guards herded bewildered tourists off Bondi and in Woy Woy I was probably scratching my groin about the time it hit Umina Beach.

In short, it was a no-show. In Australia anyways. It ripped the shit out of the Solomons. Poor bastards, as if they didn't have enough trouble with all that civil unrest shit.