Broadwater Drive Part II

Broadwater Drive (Part I) from Saturday.

(Saratoga walkies #12, not sure if it's 10 or 12 but bugger it)



Kincumber Broadwater is just above the cross at the right hand middle of the map. Broadwater Drive is pretty much under where the "Ki" and "Br" overlap the shoreline.




Broadwater Drive runs off Davistown Road in Saratoga. Weston Street is a short steep street running West off Broadwater Drive up near the Yattalunga boundary. There's only a couple of houses on it, it's that steep. This one is up the top. I think there's a house there. There's certainly a drive-way to it (below) but you can't see a bloody thing from the road.




Tree-lined drive-way at the top of Weston Street. Opposite it is bush. It was a hot wet day, a muggy Autumn morning, when I hoicked my carcass up Weston Street. As I sweated my way up the street then slithered back down the loose stones on the road, I could hear nothing but the distant drone of a speedboat and the clear single note of a bell-bird's call.




Have put this photo in again because I like it. It's down the south end of the long narrow park that runs along the foreshore behind Broadwater Drive. The houses let onto the park and no doubt the residents make good use of it.

Notice the old tyres for stabilising the bank and the ubitiqious rock oysters clinging to the bricks in the left of the picture.

There was a faint whiff of sun-soaked seaweed and the quiet lap and slap of a slowly rising tide. It was a wee bit cool under the mangroves that morning but in summer they are a glorious refuge from the sun for man and duck.


Alphabet soup

Blasted pictures are being squashed by the sidebar again. Yonks back Fuckkit send me a thing for how to make a blog wider but gmail has chucked the bastard out. Will have to hunt the code down when I've got a sec. Fuckkit is in Fiji or summat now.


The flicks

Went to the flicks today. Cheap Tuesday at Ettalong. Saw The Bank Job. It was funny, smart and violent. Just the kind of flick I like. Based on a true story about the 1971 Baker Street robbery in which a bank vault of safety deposit boxes got tunnelled into and the crims found naughty pictures of a member of the royal family, which is Princess Margaret in a three-way in the film.

There was stand-over men, an archeaological site, naked people, amusing gaffs on walkie talkies, bent coppers, the aforementioned three-way, spooks (spies), pollies behaving badly, a gruesome torture scene, and the baddest guy gets a good kicking. Good clean fun.


Dredging saga continues

There's a shitload of sandbanks in Brisbane Water, mostly around the Ettalong area, and including one big one at the corner Ettalong and Umina beaches that the Palm Beach ferry has to skirt. (See ferry routes between The Rip and Lion Island above.)

Various sections of local and state government are still squabbling over who's paying for the dredging. They've been at it a couple of years that I can remember, probably longer.

From the Express Advocate:
"The Palm Beach ferry "transfers 400,000 people a year between the coast and Sydney's northern beaches.

When bushfires closed the Pacific Highway, F3 and the train line in 2002 and again on January 22 last year, the service ran 24 hours a day as the coast's only direct transport link to Sydney."

"The channel between the rocks south of Lobster Beach and shifting sandbars on the Ettalong Beach side has been reduced to between 12m and 15m wide depending on the tide.

Mr Lloyd said a 10m wide ferry could not navigate the channel if another boat even a runabout was coming the other way.

"We'd either crash, run them into the rocks or swamp them in our wake," he said." More)

Safety fears could sink ferry service


Footy ferry

The local ferry crowd, the same crowd that run the Saratoga and the wee old Codock II, are doing a ferry run to the footy. Up to Gosford wharf from various stops on the Empire Bay run to the Mariners game at Bluetongue AKA Grahame Park.