A few of my favourite things

These are my favourites of my own photos. Been meaning to show you these for a bit. Hold yer pointer over a photo to see its title.
















































Took yonks to trim that lot down from 30 to 13 pictures. I've taken heaps more good pictures than I realised.


Rumour has it

Apparently some tool wants to build a 7-storey building in Peaceful Downtown Hardys Bay.

That would be fugly.


Local linkage

Some interesting local photos at Blu Ocean Imagery


Onya Stevo

Woy Woy Steve has got himself in the local rag again. Full page article on the hieroglypics up at Kariong. Read all about it.

There's also a snippet from him about the gateway to the lost Egyptian civilisation at Kariong and an older post about the hieroglyphs and other local strangeness.

Kookaburras

Wiki Creative Commons image

Kookaburra, Laughing Kookaburra, Dacelo novaeguineae.

Lots more kookaburras on the Peninsula lately. Maybe the La Nina was a good breeding season for them.

They are shy but live in the suburbs quite happily. The closest I've ever got to one was about 3 metres and that was prety unusual. Usually they get twitchy as soon as you look at them and then a few seconds later they're off.

They hang out in gum trees in gangs of three or four or half a dozen. As the sun gets low they give a few brief chuckles then they start up their chorus of full-on laughing. Other than the didgeridoo, you don't get a sound much more Straylyan.

MP3 of kookas laughing

(Device dear, you might consider the Blue-winged Kookaburra (D. leachii) as a replacement for Mrs Beaky as it specialises in maniacal cackling.



Kookaburra nest in a dead gum tree at Umina Beach. Can you see it?




The entrance to the nest is the small dark hole in the brown section. (Hur hur.)


Kookaburra factoids

* Breeding males have blue bums, "Breeding male: Centre of rump bright blue" says the library book

* They are silent gliders when they come in to land in a tree or on a fence

* They land with their tails up then lower them slowly

* They sit on a branch and wait for the menu to wander past

* They eat meat, rats, small lizards and birds, large insects and snakes

* They are biggish compared to something like yer crow and come in 28-42 cm (11-17 inches in the old money)

* Families groups are 4 to 8 birds

* Teenage kookas often sit alone on a fence or in a tree



Distributon map. Where kookas live in Australia. Red dot is Woy Woy.




An old photo of kookas found on the Powerhouse's Flickr.

"General information about the Powerhouse Museum Collection is available at www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database."

(The internets has made it possible for museum's to show off the shitloads of fabulous old photos they've have stashed away. I *heart* the internets.)


More kooka photos

Families that laugh together stick together

So whats for Lunch?

Head shot

Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree (pool of photos)

Wiki has heaps of good photos

Um, yeah

Missed another Tuesday blog. Work is piled high. Brain is numb.

Might be a couple of months before I can manage Tuesday posts again so let's go with just Saturdays for a bit.

P.S. Promise I'm not going to stop altogether. I still like doing it.


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Our Steve

Woy Woy Steve, commenter and local blogger, got himself in the local rag. Read all about it.

I read yer article, Stevo, over someone's shoulder in the train. Very good. Couldn't get my own copy but everyone was talking about it. Onya!


Snippets

A few links and stuff from the back of the cupboard.

Freo Boys High at the Lock Family's Ramblings (Yes, that is my photo)

Native flowers fact sheets with pictures

Marvellously lethal (a cautionary tale)

South Lobster

Embiggened version

The Brisbane Water/Great Gosford area is chockers with cliffs like these. They are a magnet for rock climbers.

Not that I'm a rock climber. I ain't that intrepid. I'm more yer supervisory sort. Very good at standing at the bottom of the cliff with a beer, waiting until they get to a hard bit then saying "Nah, see, yer doing it all wrong, you shoulda turn left twenty feet back". And no doubt I'd show up in the morgue a bit later with a crampon rammed up the clacker.

But they fascinate me. They show up in searches I do for posts and I love their secret climbers' language. Don't understand a bloody word of it but I love it anyways.

An example of ClimbSpeak:
"Reach up around the lip for a large jug then crank out onto the main face... Crux move up thin face to the juggy lip."

What?



The red blobs are local rock climbing sites. The orange blob on Box Head is a look-out you can bushwalk to.

Bear in mind this map marks only the sites I could find online. Doubtless there's more mapped and to be mapped.


Rock linkage

Links have got maps and stuff and more examples of ClimbSpeak.

Blackwall Mountain

Phegans Bay, cliffs visible from Woy Woy station/Railway Street

Reeves Street/Fountain Creek, Narara which is just up past Gosford. Gosford is at the mouth of the Narara valley.

Wards Hill is a "...surprisngly impressive crag located right beside Ward's Hill Rd, Empire Bay.
The crag has two distinct walls - the first is a nice looking 10m high grey wall with 5 or 6 mainly bolted routes (old carrots plus some rather mangled fixed hangers). The main wall is a bit further on, and reaches about 20m in height, with superb orange rock at the base. There look to be about another half dozen routes or so on this wall, with a variety of carrots and fixed hangers for protection."

The Bouddi has the South Lobster climb and a lot of others and some interesting info about the terrain there in the national park.

Good Bouddi pictures

Good Barrenjoey pictures


Coupla cliffy photos



Sandstone boulder fallen off the cliff at Dark Corner (Patonga).



The cliff it fell off.

Patonga walkies

Path to Pearl Beach

Cliff face on path to Pearl Beach

These cliffs are dangerous bastards. I'd rather just take a
nice walk myself.


Gotta be in it to win it

You Americans and the Kiwis as well, yer funny buggers. I still don't get non-compulsory voting. Anxious bulletins about polling day weather, all this talk about how many voters have got off their arse and registered or might feel like voting on the day.

We got compulsory voting. You turn 18, yer registered to vote. Only way out is to cark it when yer 17.

And it's not like it's a big deal. You just show up at the local primary school on the day, collect yer forms, traipse over to the cardboard booths, tick a few boxes and give the forms back.

No-one knows how you voted and it's not kosher to ask. You vote with your conscience or, if yer a goose, with someone else's, and it's over for another 3 years. It's a communal experience and you don't even miss the cricket.

Mind you, non-compulsory voting is nothing like as scary as some of the voting systems in undeveloped nations. I've seen on the telly how they do it up in PNG (Papua New Guinea) and some places in Africa where they put a different coloured piece of paper in the box depending on who they vote for and everyone in the room can see the box. Couple of heavies standing near the door watching and their mates outside waiting to beat you up if you didn't vote for their guy. Bugger me! I'm very glad I live in Straylya where we got the secret ballot.

"One of the most common forms in the modern world provides for pre-printed ballot papers with the name of the candidates or questions and respective checkboxes. Provisions are made at the polling place for the voter to record their preferences in secret. The ballots are specifically designed to eliminate bias and to prevent anyone from linking voter to ballot. This system is also known as the Australian ballot, because it originated in Australia during the 1850s. In the United States, it is also known as the Massachusetts ballot since Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to use the secret ballot." (Wiki)

Compulsory Voting (Australian Electoral Commission PDF)

International IDEA - Compulsory Voting (International Institute for Democracy & Electoral Assistance)

Compulsory Voting (Wiki)

Secret Ballot (Wiki)

The Australian ballot - born 1855 and still going strong

Venice Road

(Pretty Beach walkies #2)

Finished Pretty Beach in two walkies. One in May last year and one in October this year (2008). Pretty Beach is not a big town. It's barely a town at all. Doesn't even have its own pub. Or even a corner shop with pies and newspapers. Just seven streets, two private schools and a public wharf.




Rock Oysters abound on the Brisbane Water. Every wet rock, every jetty, every old bit of wharf is covered in them.

Pretty Beach is just across the water from the Woy Woy Peninsula. Go down to the Ettalong ferry wharf (in Ferry Road) and look across to Wagstaffe and Hardys and it's in between them. (Map)




No trailer needed

To get to Pretty Beach, get the Cockatoo ferry from Woy Woy in the school holidays, or get onto Wards Hill Road off Empire Bay Drive opposite Palmers Lane and follow the signs to Hardys Bay. Then go down into Hardys and onto Heath Road and yer in Pretty Beach when you see the primary school.




Native flowers on a small native tree on the waterfront. The tree looked like a tea tree except for these flowers.




The house on the right is yer average house as seen around Brisbane Water. The one on the left is not. Looks very stylish in a rather sixties way. Can't find a precise style for it in my architecture book so we'll just say 1960s. It's in Venice Road Pretty Beach behind the tennis courts.




Hakea or grevillea. I'm back to forgetting which. Venice Road Pretty Beach.


Michael's bits

Michael's got some nice local photos over on his Flickr. I particularly like these three views from Killcare.

And there's a lovely sunny picture of the Codock punting past Wagstaffe on some stranger's Flickr.

How cool is America now?

Onya, 'Mericans! You voted in the black guy. Now yer cool enough to play with the cool kids.

Australia's cool because our Prime Minister officially apologised for being evil to the blackfellas.

So did Canada's so they're cool.

New Zealand is cool because they got a girl Prime Minister.

England's cool because they had a girl Prime Minister, even if she was pretty scary.

And we're going to be even cooler when we vote in either the rock star, the redhead, the chick (same person as the redhead) or the poofter.


(Wiki Creative Commons)

......Peter Garrett..................Julia Gillard.......................Bob Browne

Cultivars & the Cup

Grevillea lanigera cultivar

A purely picture post today. I am buggered. Lovely holiday followed by a day of very hard yakka. No fair!

Cultivars of native plants are getting popular. The sundae one is my favourite.

Garden Express will not mind my blogging their stuff in exchange for the link.



Grevillea hybrid 'Strawberry Sundae' cultivar



Callistemon Pink Champagne



The flowers of the Callistemon are very similar to the spines of this bottlebrush flower.



Grevillea hybrid 'Fireworks' cultivar

For non-cultivar grevilleas, pop over to my photos looking great on the black of Device dear's blog.




Wollemi christmas tree

The Wollemi (Wollemia nobilis) is the Jurassic tree found in the Blue Mountains in 1994.

Wollemi bonsai



Embiggen, high res

Leucospermum cultivar (Wiki Creative Commons)

Looks like a waratah but is in fact a Leucospermum glabrum x L. tottum ‘Scarlet Ribbon’ cultivar in Tasmania.


Snippets

Pop over to Steve's for Haunted Woy Woy

Welcome to the Bustling Woy Woy blogosphere (population 3), Grumpy Old Journo.


1st Tuesday in November

Tomorrow is Melbourne Cup day.

Form Guide & stuff

The Birdcage (hats, celebs & champers)