All the leaves are green and the sky is grey

I have been working my arse off this last couple of months. Have not even walked for a whole month. Hideous state of affairs. Must remedy. Holidays coming up and I'm trying to wangle a whole month off in which to have rest and walkies and rest and stuff and rest. Meanwhile, Woy Woy is blooming with summer flowers.



Jacaranda and Hakea

Jacarandas are an exotic species (imported and not native to Australia). Gorgeous trees. Currently looking fabulous against the Woy Woy skies. An aerial photo of a town when these are flowering will instantly tell you where the older areas of the town are.

Hakea (or possibly grevillea) is a native species and a popular garden bush. Couple more looking spiffy on a black background here.




Christmas bush

Ceratopetalum gummiferum. Native species. Coming into full flower now, hence the name Christams bush.

Close-ups




Lillipilli hedge. A native species, Syzygium smithii. Not flowering but leafing. The leaves on top go red in spring and summer.

The flowering gums (native species) have finished flowering and those noisy lorikeet bastards have buggered off to greener pastures. The giant cacti are budding (exotic species).

Woy Woyan flowers both native & exotic

All the native flowers posted since I started tagging plus Winter floraland for added seasonal confusion.


Local linkage

The duck problem (Ta for the link, Ian.)

Excellent mappage and link to war stories from Steve. Had no idea the war came so close to the NSW coast.

Kite-surfer airlifted from Ettalong Beach. Looks like he came ashore at the end of Barrenjoey Road near those 60s flats. Poor bastard. Sorry I missed the chopper landing at Ettalong but.

Girl priest raises Woy Woy's PCF (Playground Coolness Factor).

Buy one get one free ferry tickets on the Codock II AKA Cockatoo ferry from the 27th.

Smiley face in the sky

Bonus post. Once in a lifetime event. Next appearing in Southern skies in 2036 or something.



Taken by a mate in Sydney.

Saw it here too but it didn't show up on my pissy camera. Here it was clearly visible through a light mist of cloud. A big cosmic smiley face up there in the sky. Glorious.

"[O]n Monday (1 December 2008) there will be a spectacular conjunction between the two planets Venus and Jupiter and the crescent Moon. Though the conjunction will be impressive from anywhere in the world, it will only smile on Australia and Australian longitudes almost in the form of a “smiley” emoticon. From the USA, for instance, the conjunction will be in the form of an upside down sad face."

Venus, Jupiter and the Moon: a smiley face in the sky (has photos)

December 2008 night sky guide and podcast

Another Sydney photo


Bugger

Caitlyn says my RSS feed doesn't work. Ta for letting me know. Will fix the bastard as soon as I work out how.




Linkage to my site can be had in the "Compose" tab of Blogger. Click the wee button of a green disc and link.

Or just copy this text link.


Okay, I'd better piss off. I officially started work an hour ago.

Theroy's

Theroy's is gone. It was one of my favourite buildings in the area. It was up at Point Clare on Brisbane Water Drive, just across from the Pt Clare railway station. It was an old chemist.

Built circa 1920, fibro with a fifties facade added onto the front of it and a shopkeeper's residence attached to the side (right). It had been empty for yonks and a new chemist built beside it, a brick job with a long switchback ramp, instead of steps, for the Dear Old Things to get up to the door.




The wee old shop is gone as well. It was between Theroy's and the corner of Talinga Avenue. It wasn't number 5. It had a couple more numbers but they kept dropping off. It might've been number 155 but don't quote me on that.

Can't be sure of the shop's date but I'm willing to say around 1900. As for the style, I'll go with Plain Old Shopfront. Which is not an official style but a well-known one.

Notice the window on this end of the shopfront is longer. The door used to be there. Or rather, the wee ramp up to the door used to be there. The door itself ws set back about eight feet from the front of the shop, in the old way, and the wee ramp led up to it. There's a similar style here in Ettalong, minus the ramp.




Between Theroy's and the wee old shop was a fibro house of uncertain age, which squatted silently behind a hedge. On the other side, on the corner of Talinga Avenue was a front yard of trees with another old fibro house lurking rustily behind them. I liked that corner. I liked the trees and the wee old house and I liked Theroy's. I don't care that they were mostly derelict, I liked them.

The fish shop is still there on the other corner.

Map showing the demolition/building site
Map showing Point Clare & Woy Woy


New blogging schedule

I'm still up to my eyeballs in work and likely to be for a wee while. So the new posting days are Wednesday and Saturday. Or Wednesday and Monday for all you buggers reading at work.

To get reminders to your inbox, stick yer email in the slot. The Feedblitz slot in the sidebar, just about the Babel Fish thingy.


Links un-bunged

Sorry. All this time I've had the link for the PM's Apology and all the Sorry posts empty and I never noticed. Might be time to see an optometrist. Anyways, they're fixed now.

And here's the link to the Canadian PM's Apology. Onya, Canada.


Links new

Skippys List, 213 things Skippy can't do in the army, is olden but golden.

A mate has gun pronz on his blog, Terminal Ballistics. (Do take the bullets out before you make the sex with your firearm, gun fans.)


Spiketionary

Babel Fish is a translator bot. It's named after a small wet fish invented by Douglas Adams. There is a link to it on my sidebar for the convenience of non-English speakers who read this blog.

BabelFish the bot translates from one language to another automatically. You just bung a slab of text into the bot and it translates it into your language.

It works on picking the most likely meaning of a word so you can get some very entertaining translations.

You can also get some weird and disturbing translations. F'rinstance, when I write 'a wee bit of rain' Babel Fish translates it to 'a urine part of rain' in some languages. This may cause alarm and dismay amongst innocent readers.

So, in the spirit of clearing things up, I've made another translation thingy, a Spiketionary.

(And I've added chook strangler to the Ducktionary by the way, Ron.)