(Random walkies in Woy Woy)



(The camera battery carked it, hence the low res mobile phone snaps.)

The Paperbark Forest is a wee sliver of bushland sandwiched between a suburban street and the golf course. It's official name is the Everglades Lagoon Wetland. I've been there before. It's one of my favourite bits of Woy Woy.




Wandered up to the forest mid-morning during the week.

There's been a decent bit of rain in the last week or so and the wetland's lagoons are fairly full. The ground is covered in leaf litter right to the water's edge and you can't tell where the mud starts and ends. Put a foot wrong and you'll end up on your arse. You gotta tread slowly from stick to fallen stick.

Had a bit of a wander about then picked a firm bit of ground to stand on, in a tiny clearing back from the water. Just stood there and looked and soaked up the leafy quiet of the place.

Small patches of light outlining the shadows on the ground of the big trunks, there was the plucking almost-cluck of a tree bird at the very edge of the lagoon, the high almost-honk reply from a dozen trees away. Over and over. They should just get together already and do brunch.

Mmm ... brunch ... Dug quietly in my pocket for a bar of chocolate, leant on a spider-free trunk and ate and listened.

The wetland backs onto the golf course and there was the faint sound of a golfball being sworn at. Eventually, the bloke managed to hit it and went off after it and the golf course disappeared from the aural landscape.

A chocolate brown butterfly with white-edged wings flittered about nearby and starlings or something twittered in the trees like twinks at cafe.




After I'd been still for a while, there was a faint rustling in the bracken under a cluster of trees. Some sort of wee beastie perhaps. Up near the edge of the forest, where it's sandy, there were a dozen small holes dug by small paws. Don't think lizards really hang out in wetlands that much. Could be wrong though. But there's definitely bandicoots on the peninsula and I know they like it sandy.

The breeze picked up again and two tall paperbarks moaned as they rubbed together as slow as Sunday sex. Above that was the soft silvery sound of the breeze shivering through the tops of the trees.

A whole stand of tall straight paperbarks had all grown leaning slightly in one direction. The longer I stared at them, I more felt like I was standing crooked. Started to get vertigo and had to look away.




In the drier ground, back from the lagoons, native violets spread out in wide patches. Just a few flowers so far, in the sunny spots, more at the edges of the forest where there was more light.

Long pale branches radiate out across the ground from the trees they've fallen off. Their shapes are flowing and take your eye across the wee clearings to where there's a lone baby cabbage tree palm or gun tree sapling.

A lone kooka gave that faint drumming ound in its throat they do before they laugh. Stood there patiently but it was only warming-up not actually laughing. It sounded like a teenager and I've heard them do that a lot. Maybe they can't laugh until they're adults.




In the spreading trunk of a big old tree, some kids had built a platform for a cubby-house. In the raft of branches laid overhead there were some sheets of newspaper and more sheets all around the tree like they’d been blown out or rained out. Guys, your cubby is in the middle a bloody paperbark forest. You sure there’s nothing better to make the roof out of?*

There was a cabbage tree palm every hundred yards or so. Along the edge of the forest, where it borders the lane, there was a thin line of casuarina trees and a gum every now and then. Other than that, the paperbark forest is all paperbarks.




Summer on the left, winter on the right

Paperbark Forest in summer

Bonus photo

Traditional Aboriginal uses of paperbark


Stuff

My favourite shop name on the peninsula? Acropolis Yeeros Chinese Takeaway. Menu includes, kebabs (kabobs to Americans), rainbow steak, chow mein and steak sangers.

Illustrated Ducktionary addition, courtesy of Ron in Fort Bragg


World wide walkies

Fabulous wilderness photos from Kansas


Local linkage

Some fresh this week, some a wee bit late.

Woy Woy at Wordpress

Fabulous fish and crab photos from a kayaker

Comment from old Woy Woy cinema worker on Stevo's model of same

Last chance to see, includes GPS & directions to the Woy Woy hieroglyphs

ACDC concert that never was

A year to the day (Roy Sainty finally found and buried, my sympathies to his family and best wishes to all those still missing a child)

Slightly eerie dusk photo of the beach

Fabulous photos from Empire Bay

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Filthy dirty filking

(Random hung-over, Christmas-party fueled whingeing & filking*)



O Christmas bush
O Christmas bush
O Cerapetalum apetalum

In New South Wales at Christmas time
You come out in December heat

O Christmas bush
O Christmas bush
O Cerapetalum apetalum

With petals red and orange too
Only after pollination

O Christmas bush
O Christmas bush
O Cerapetalum apetalum


There's also Cerapetalum gummiferum which is the same until you get up close and see the leaves are arranged differently. And the gummiferum is pretty tall and "during World War II it provided the butts for all rifles made in Australia". Huh.


Off to my fourth Christmas party this week this arvo. May not survive. Normally I avoid office parties like the fucking plague but I called in a lot of favours this year and the payback is showing up as stand-in date. The next person to offer me a mince pie is dead.


Local linkage

Bike bunnies do Umina

Dickhead factor rockets during school holidays


Woy Woy as was

Love the photos and stories of old Woy Woy in the local rag. Woy Woy Steve is back writing them again and Fred Landman and Keith Whitfield are regulars and I've got one from June 2009 by Bruce Richards.

Sometimes the old buildings they talk about, old cinemas and milk bars and so forth, are gone now and sometimes they're just re-invented but I can usually see where they were or their remnants are. Adds a whole new depth to my walkies to have personal histories tied to the streets and buildings of my town.

Keep writing, guys.


Christmas story re-visited

How the angel got on top of the tree (click 'n' scroll)


Want my thingy in yer whatsit?

I'm off for Xmas. Off away from the madding crowd to a place where the bush turkeys roam free.

I'll be back ab-o-u-t ... Let's call it mid January. The 16th. Yeah.

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Have yerselves a merry little Xmas.


* Filking ain't really dirty. I mentioned it to a Dear Old Thing one day and she reacted like it was a very naughty swear-word and now when I say it I get a naughty little thrill. It's that thing where you replace some or all of the words of an existing tune with your own words, like I did with Oh Christmas Tree. Go filk yerself (with links).

Up and down

(Random Woy Woy walkies)



Here we're looking north-east or east-north-east across The Bays (Correa Bay, Horsfield Bay, Phegans Bay & Woy Woy Bay) to Brisbane Water proper and the low part of Saratoga/Davistown and beyond that to Kincumba Mountain. Though it was Killcare/the Bouddi but the map says no.

One blue-sky day in the last week synched with a day I was well enough to take the camera out. Got a mate to drive me up to a street with views, tottered out of the car, took a couple of snaps, back home again.

Spent most of the week writhing round on the sofa in another bloody bout of bloody gut pain. No end of fucking fun. The rest of the week it was lovely and cool but way too cloudy for camera outings.




The bark falls off some of the gum trees at this time of year. You can see some of the bark in the cleft of this tree. The spots and dots and dimples of colour and texture where the bark has fallen away are normal.


Chrissy is nearly upon us. There is a frenzy of shopping and barbeque-ing and getting off yer face on the weekends and the rest of it. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.


Local linkage

Bloggers

We've lost another blogger. Ian at Grumpy Old Journo. A local. He blogged from 2005, 4 years, same as me. He will be missed.

But gained a blogger at Copa (Copacabana, a local beach).


Others

Bensvillians unite at facebook. And yes, that thumbnail is one of my photos.

Photos of Woy Woy and Lion Island from the Kur-ring-gai National Park.

Pop over to Bryan's family history page for a great old photo. Bryan is locally connected through Picketts and Humpries at Holy Cross Church/St. Joseph's in Kincumber.

Other family historians with local connections are welcome to email me their website address for local linkage.


The ferry news



Cockatoo ferry AKA Codock II AKA the lovely old one is running again. Timetables

Along the water

(Green Point walkies #3)



Starting point. Rocky Point in fact. Bottom of Orana Road.

To get to this park, come down Avoca Drive from The Entrance Road and turn right into Bayside Drive at the lights or Orana Road just after them.

If you're coming from Woy Woy, come up Maitland Bay Drive and over The Rip Bridge and up Empire Bay Drive to the wee stone church at the roundabout in Kincumber and turn left into Avoca Drive and go straight through Kincumber then up the hill and round and left into Orana Road just before the lights.




Wee old houses nestled between big flash houses on Point Frederick.

This is pretty much the same as anywhere there's big pricey houses along the water round Woy Woy and Brisbane Water and up and down the Central Coast. There's still some wee old houses from before the seventies, before the war and before the first war when land was cheap and there was fuck-all houses around Brisbane Water anyways.

It's like a miniature history of the Coast on one street. This particular street being Albany Street, the street running from stem to stern of Point Frederick AKA Longnose. In the background yer looking at Rumbalara Reserve (hill in shadow) and what appears to be Waterview Park AKA Presidents Hill above the trots in Gosford. Locals will know Presedents Hill as the hillside on which The Castle sits.




Bit of the park. It's a narrow strip of grassed land between the water and the houses with a private jetty and boat parked opposite nearly every house. Again, same all round Woy Woy and Brisbane Water.




Some mangroves can get quite tall. These ones were about 15 metres (49.21 feet). Usually they're 2 to 6 metres (6.56 to 19.69 feet).




The inevitable tinny.




A wee muddy creek at Ironbark Point, about halfway up the park. Could be a storm drain all full after the bit of rain we had in October but it looked more creeky with the trees round it.




Scribbly gum bark found in the wee bit of bush beside Kenmare Road. Scribbly gums are Eucalyptus haemastoma. The link has a good photo of the tree.

The scribbles are made by a wee tiny beastie, the larvae of the Scribbly Gum Moth (Ogmograptis scribula).


Bonus photo



Woy Woy to Koolewong footbridge as seen from Green Point.

Much clearer view of the footbridge. Couldn't find the bastard last week.


New new timetable

Local ferries timetable. Yep, same ferry as takes the Dear Old Things to the Davo.

I don't get paid for the local ferry adverts, by the way. I just love ferries.

Spring flowers

The flowering of the gums sends the lorikeets berserk.




Bloody lorikeets in a feeding frenzy outside my window. Low res but the noisy bastards are coming across loud and clear.




These are coming out.




And these.




These are a garden favourite.




So are these. Waist-high bush covered in tiny wee pink flowers.




Local wattle species growing at Ettalong Beach last year.




And, of course, Australia's favourite golden wattle, the silver wattle. It's called that after the silvery grey of the leaves.




Golden wattle in the wind. Taken at the old Gosford quarry a while back. You don't often get to hear the wattle.


Lazy bastard

What with feeling crook and generally just being an unorganised bastard, I'm a month behind on my email. I'll get to yer.


Six degrees of Flickration

Got added to some new feature at Flickr. Gallery of sailboats.

Salty bits

(Bensville walkies #3)



Down a quiet suburban street to the saltmarsh. So many streets lead down to the water and to wee wild places around Brisbane Water and here in Woy Woy. You'd be daft to leave.

This is North Street. It's one of twenty streets that made up Bensville. (Street map next week. Map of where Bensville is.)




The low red plant might be samphire. Even though it's red it's not ruby saltbush and it's not austral seablite. The trees are casuarina. They like it by the water.




The low red plant and the spiky reed. Both of these are also at Woy Woy, on the waterfront at Brick Wharf Road.




Peaceful and quiet in the warm winter sun.




I disturbed some dozing ducks. They paddled away slowly. That's those reeds or rushes or something again there in the foreground. You don't want to go wandering through them. Sharp as buggery.

That hill in the background is Davistown or Saratoga. Hard to tell from that angle but they're both on the same peninsula anyways.


Local linkage

Deepwater Plaza mural finished at last. The bastard is bloody tricky to photograph. Bad spot re light and as soon as you get the camera out every bus on the fucking peninsula comes thundering past. Oh the humanity!

Nice Umina Beach & wildflower photos - Umina resident on Flickr


Taking the piss

Jensen Ackles lip-synching to Eye of the Tiger (full clip)

Ackles gives good giggle. On yer, mate. Oh and can I lick yer boyfriend? Please?


Warm winter sun

Glorious walkies weather on Thursday and Friday. I was trapped inside doing evil work stuff but it's the same weather today and I'll soon be out under the sun with my shirt off and a steak sanger for my lunch so it's all good.

North Street

(Bensville walkies #2)



Down the bottom of North Street, near Hastings Wharf, there's a wider bit of park perfect for chucking a stick for yer dog. It's right beside the water so there's the usual puppy pile of slumbering dinghies*, a stand of casuarinas and a couple of magpies strutting about pecking at things.




Warm winter days are my favourite for walkies and photos. The sun is soft and warm and sky's as blue as fuck.

Ron wants to know "why is blue so much blue-er down under?"

Something to do with latitudes and light apparently. Some colours look different here. Snowy white walls in your house that look great in England f'rinstance, look harsh and crap here and visiting artists twitter on about how different the light outdoors is. This thingo and this one might help. Could also have something to do with ozone.




Between Kallaroo Road and North Street in Bensville the park is just a narrow strip and a path past the scout hall.

There's rocks with graffitti cut into them by bored-yet-industrious scouts, mangroves, washed up sea grass, wet dogs who want to sniff yer bum, the gentle slap of water on seaweed and tree and an abandoned office chair.

Perfect spot to just stop and stare at how bloody gorgeous this place is.


Everyone thinks I got a big one

It's very flattering when people comment and email about the size of my camera. Everyone wants to know how big it is. Thing is, with cameras, it ain't the meat it's the motion. Can't seem to convince anybody of that though.

(Just so we're clear, my dick, however, is as much meat as it is motion!)



* Spelt dinghy right for a change! Must be all that bacon I'm not eating now. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Blue sky cold day

(Random walkies in Koolewong)



Cycle path at Koolewong.

Lovely avenue of trees along this part of the path. A long stand of casuarinas whispering in the wind on the park side, mangroves with the water slapping about their roots on the water side.

(Kept typing root instead of roots. Wonder what I'm thinking about!)




Koolewong from Koolewong.

Koolewong is a shallow bay. This is taken from one side of the bay looking at the other.

Well, okay, technically it's two bays. This bay and Murphys Bay.




Shade on the ridge and the soft filtered light through the casuarina needles.




Soft weird sky seen through the casuarinas.




That's Koolewong there in the red box. It's a narrow strip of flat land and a couple of streets going up the ridgeside a bit.

It has bugger-all streets compared to Woy Woy. Or compared to anywhere really. Except maybe Patonga, which has five streets.


Pissing down most of the week. Today can't make up its mind. I can. I'm off to a barbie. At which I will not eat bacon, pizza or those really fat sausages not matter how good they smell. Nor will I be imbibing of the amber fluid. How boring is that?


By the way

That Rip Bridge photo everyone loves got invited to the Best of Australia group in Flickr. One of them invite-only photo groups. Goes to show how a bit of practice can turn a crap photographer into a decent photographer.

How to take decent photos

Pelican Island

If you live in Woy Woy you can't not know Pelican Island. It's right there opposite the ferry wharf, about as far across the water as a seagull can spit, barely a hundred yards from the train station and Bustling Downtown Woy Woy.

But hardly anyone ever goes there. It's uninhabited, except by pelicans and trees. And mozzies (mosquitoes). Fucking squadrons of the bastards! We were eaten alive, even with the bloody repellant slathered on like cream on cake.




As you can see in the in-set map, Pelican Island is actually two islands with a narrow channel running between them. Another narrow channel, a dead end, runs into the interior of the larger island. (In-set map borrowed and modified from the local ferry crowd.)




There's a few tiny wee beaches for landing on the island. The biggest is maybe ten metres long. That's about 33 feet in American. Give or take.




The rest of the shore is thick with mangroves. Those white lumps on the mangroves roots are rock oysters.




A few feet from the shore and the casuarina trees (left) start. The other name for them is she-oaks. They have needles instead of leaves, not smooth but with tiny segments like bamboo. (Close-up of needles) When the wind whispers through them it gives a soft whispery howl.




The island is made of sand and can't be more than a metre (about 3 feet) above sea level at high tide. We could see where big waves or king tides had swept sea grass and floating stuff up over the wee beach and several metres inland.




Going into the interior of the island it was surpisingly open. There were lots of casuarina but a few dozen banksia trees as well and grasses I didn't recognise. That's a banksia there in the middle ground.




Once you're into the trees it's easy to forget how close you are to town. This is looking from the north-east end of the island across Woy Woy Channel to Lions Park at the end of North Burge Road (red cross on map.)

That's the Lady Kendall II of the Gosford ferries passing the park. She does the tours.




Then you look away to the east and there's Rileys, the other uninhabited island near Woy Woy. (There's also half a dozen wee islets barely wide enough to spit across.)

Pelican Island stats 'n' stuff

Rileys Island stats 'n' stuff

Wee islets nearby: Unnamed Isles, Oyster & Retention Islets at St. Huberts, Islets of Fagans Bay & the one people think is Pelican Island but isn't

Then there's Lion Island, which is in the mouth of Broken Bay not in the Brisbane Water estuary itself. But, just so yer good and confused, the estuary is in Broken Bay. (Maps)

Give me the Southerly or give me death

Jetty building platform boats at Woy Woy Wharf a few weeks ago.

It is bloody hot and bloody sticky. Got to 34 and about 300% humidity. I am irritable and miserable. We were promised a nice cool Southerly and so far there's been fuck all.


Have you seen this dog?



These signs and others are still up all around Woy Woy.

Sanji has been missing since the 9th of November. She is part of the husky team that pulls Santa's sleigh to shopping centres and old people's homes.

Reward for her safe return. Phone 4341 2684/040 504 3306.

Full text of notice


Local Linkage

Tascott is now on facebook. It has photos and a cocky video. That's a video of a cockatoo not a video with an excess of self-confidence.

Right. I'm off. It is my intention to climb into a bath of icy cold beer armed only with a straw.