(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, July 24, 2010

Tribute to Vaughn Bode

(Random Woy Woy walkies)



This is Cheech Wizard. He was the best-known charater of Vaughn Bode. He's on a Bode tribute wall in a lane off Alma Avenue in Woy Woy.

(Locals, Alma Ave is the wee street of small factories and stuff off Trafalgar Ave next to the fire station at the shops.)




Bode was an American artist who did underground comics, graphic design and graffiti. He died in 1975 at 33. His most well-known character was Cheech Wizard.




Part of the Tribute to Vaughn Bode wall.

The green creature on the left might be Razzberry, the offsider of Cheech Wizard.




Left end of the mural. Rest of the mural.







My favourite.


Bonus photos

Other murals & (good) graffitti around Woy Woy

Gallery at Bode's homepage (on his son's site)

Bode on Wiki

Cheech Wizard & Razzberry

Other tributes to Bode


Local Linkage

The local ferries crowd has their new newsletter out with the footy ferry and timetables and stuff. Go here.

Nice bit of info about Rileys Island from a bloke whose family was one of its many owners. Ta, mate. (Scroll down to Duncan's comment.)


Righto, that's yer lot for the week. My ride is here.

The wattles are coming

(Random walkies in Woy Woy)



It's clouding over, blast it. It was a sunny winter's morning here in Woy Woy. Froze my bloody nuts off yesterday with the icy wind, and that was only a short scuttle from car to home. Bloody lovely sun though. All warm and toasty.

The golden wattles are starting to bloom. Not sure which wattle this one is. It blooms first round here anyways. The local wattles, A. prominens AKA Gosford Wattle and Coastal Wattle AKA Acacia longifolia or A. sophorae come in a month or two. Acacia pycnantha is the national wattle, the one on our $5 note and the old 2 shilling stamp and the 41 cent stamp in 1990 and under the roo and the emu on the coat of arms thingo.


Wattle-gasm at my Flickr


I've been spending my mornings in a sunny window, covered from head to toe in beanies and rugs and uggs. July's the coldest month in Strayla.


10 questions

A bit of entertainment from Device dear


1. What's your earliest memory?

Not getting to wear a fairy skirt at kindy. It would've looked fabulous with the cowboy hat.

2. What was the last thing you ate?

Breakfast. Boring I know.

3. Would you support a comeback by Steps?

Yes. No. I'll get back to you on that.

4. What is your dream car?

MGB

5. How tall are you?

5 foot 10.

6. Margaret Thatcher vs Queen Elizabeth II: Who would win and why/how?

The queen because no-one's fiercer and the corgis are pretty feral.

7. Mama Cass died choking on a sandwich. What sandwich filling would you happily choke on?

Jared Padalecki.


(Sasquatch & Jenny-bean

8. Has a pick-up line ever worked for you? If so, what was it? If not, what was the worst reaction?

Never used one. *slinks away*

9. You find yourself inexplicably cloned, barely wearing something sexy, and gagging for it. You would, wouldn't you?! Just out of curiosity, or maybe for some other reason?

Would definitely do it. Purely in the interests of science of course.

10. How did you find this blog? Go on, indulge me!

You made some terribly witty comment over at Glitter for Brains and I clicked you.


Local linkage

Flemings, one of those little old local supermarkets, is no more. Woolies have built a large flash two-storey job on the other side of the road, hedging in the library, and Flemings is empty.

Michael's photo of Flemings-as-was


Straylya-wide linkage

Orphans and other former inhabitants of children's homes, the Forgotten Australia site is collecting "personal histories of those who were placed in children’s homes – a voice for those who were inside and a chance for others to understand." It's a National Museum of Australian thingo. Some bloody disturbing but very powerful material on that site.


Web-wide linkage

Lee over at Glitter for Brains got to 1,000 posts last month. That's staying power.

Buggered if I know how many I've done. Got 598 posts on the counter for This isn't Sydney (this one) and maybe a couple of hundred at Woy Woy Walkies


The Doctor

Add your vote to the eternal question: Tennant or Baker?


The Doctors Who


P.S.

Ta Stevo for the heads up with the dashboard thingy for widening. Fiddled with it for a bit but the bastard only widened one bit. Will give it a kick up the khyber another time.

In with the cool kids

Straylya is now officially one of the cool kids. We now have a girl Prime Minister.

Went to bed last night with K-Rudd stating rather tensely that he was PM and PM he was bloody well going to stay, and woke up to the sound of Our Julia being declared winner of the overnight power struggle.

Um, okay. Yeah. Righto. Sorry to see you go, Kev. Ta very much for the Sorry and getting us out of the GFC recession so quick. Better luck next time. Hello Julia.

Gillard takes up PM role in Parliament (video)

Gillard becomes Australia's first female prime minister as tearful Rudd stands aside

Rudders...not proud of blubbing (poor love, more video)

How world reports Gillard's ascension


Poo Tubes re-visited

As Stevo pointed out, I forgot to mention the dunny cart man when I blogged the Poo Tubes.

Read all about him:
Talking Heads
Dunny cart lanes
Pommy Town
Ettalong - vastly different in the 40s and 50s

(By the way, Stevo, the new blog format is looking good.)


Great Woy Woy Tea Cosy Showcase

No photos sorry, Erica. But a couple of mates send this report: popped round from pub, had a scone with jam and cream (yum), looked at the tea cosies (very nice and, um, warm), enjoyed the winter sun, returned to pub.


Where the bloody hell am I?

Still crook. Absolutely buggered. Utterly lacking in motivation to do more than totter round the block a few times and collapse back on the sofa.

Seeing a lot more of the telly than I usually do. Very much enjoying Dirty Jobs, Breaking the Magician's Code and that one with Stephen Fry where he stands on a sandbar at the beginning. And Good News Week and Dr Who of course. Long time Dr Who addict. And when the fuck are they gonna put Supernatural back on? I need my Padalecki and Ackles fix.

Anyways, I'll be back when I'm back. I'll pop round my blogroll before then but. Takes less energy.

Ta very much for all the nice get well comments.

Poo tubes

(Where the fuck have I been all this time?)



See that red circle at the left edge of map? Just along that road a bit are the sewerage farm and the tip (garbage dumping place). I woulda put them into the map exactly where they were but it was either do a new map with an extra bit down that side then have a nice long lay down or post this map and actually fucking update the blog already.


The yellow bits are the main road, the grey bits are the shops, the row of black dots is the railway line, the other dotty bits are the main beaches and the green bits are parks and reserves and wetlands. And the blue lines are creeks. Unless they're really straight in which case they're drains that used to be creeks.


Round the streets of Woy Woy and all the other places I walk, I see council workers fixing roads, electricity company workers getting branches off powerlines after the wind, Telstra workers putting in new phone lines and fiddling about down holes with PMG covers, the garbos in their truck picking up the bins, and stuff like that.

All stuff that makes a town tick. It happens all around us every day and we hardly notice it.

But we'd be stuffed without it. Civilisation is supposed to be 2 hot meals from breakdown. I reckon it's more like a week with the sewerage backed up. Gazundas and latrines just wouldn't cut it in urban society. We'd be rioting in the streets.

Anyways. This post was inspired by something I overheard on the train from a bloke who laid sewerage pipes for a living. He was talking specifically about Woy Woy and other local towns. This is the gist of what he said:

Where you've got yer older suburbs and towns, like Woy Woy, you've got an older sewerage system.

Under a given road there's a sewerage line and into it empties the sewerage lines from each house.

All well and good.

But then you get one of these places where some developer knocks down an old house. The old house had one sewerage line servicing one or two loos (toilets), a couple of adults, 2.4 kids and the Christmas influx of aunts and uncles and cousins. Up they all get in the morning, flush the loo and off to work and school.

Now that house is knocked down and half a dozen units are slapped up in its place. Half a dozen units each with one or two adults and maybe the 2.4 kids and the Christmas influx of aunts and uncles and cousins. That's 6 to 12 adults, 2.4 to 14.4 kids and 6 Christmas influxes of aunts and uncles and cousins.

And up they all get in the morning, flush the loo and off to work and school. Except the main sewerage line under the street, the one that carries it all away, hasn't usually been upgraded to carry the extra load.


So, in conclusion, old streets have narrow poo tubes. And there's other stuff like water pipes bringing clean water in that can be pretty old and need flushing out and replacing etc. We had that recently in Woy Woy. I escaped the worst but Stevo copped it.

The point of this post is just to say ta to all the blokes (and chicks) who fix the poo tubes and so on.


Collection of Lost Things


All my old St. John's photos

I've been collected again. Over at a fun Aunty project called Lost Places.

It's essentially my Gone set of photos writ large and with the whole country doing it. Pop over for a gander.


Local linkage

Craig wants to hear from locals about Empire House at Empire Bay.

Fabulous and fabulously named collection of Woy Woyan and Gosford area memorabilia and photos at Gostalgia. Ta very kindly for the linkage, Michael. Hope to fuck I got your link right this time.


Where the fuck have I been for the last 2 months?

Crook. Sick. Buggered. Stuffed. Bit of trouble with my own poo tubes. Gross symptoms. Let's not go there.

Spent most of it sleeping it off then, for the last couple of weeks, dozing on the sofa with the remote. Saw that thing where that guy died wheelie-bin surfing down Kingsview Drive/Lone Pine Avenue (the high steep bit is Kingsview, the long straight bit is Lone Pine) and watched 16-year-old Jessica Whatsit sail in through the heads after a lone trip round the world in a pink boat.

Still crook but managed a shuffle round the block every day this week so things are looking up again.

Okay. That's zonked me out for the day. Off back to the sofa with a blanket and a nice big cuppa tea. See you again soon-ish.

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

Red dawn

(Dust storm over NSW)



The view out my window at 6am this morning.

The dust was covering the coast from Woollongong to Newcastle (includes Sydney) at six. Few hours later it had reached Brisbane.

The airport was shut down and international flights were diverted to Melbourne. The ferries on Sydney Harbour were stopped. They move heaps of communters every morning but they couldn't see far enough not to prang into each other.

The local ferries were stopped due to the visibility plus the big winds. Sydney traffic was on a go-slow and traffic here was quieter than usual.

It was bloody spooky. Not to mention, bloody dusty.




Taken from Ettalong Beach at lunchtime. Note the invisibility of Lion Island and Barrenjoey Head.




Same view today (left) and any other day (right).


Dust storm photos from Sydney (Flickr)


From the Sydney Morning Herald:

"The fiery haze was the result of the sun hitting the blanket of dust, Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Jane Golding said.

"The reason for the dust is we had some really strong winds in the inland areas of NSW and in South Australia for a sustained period yesterday," she said.

"That's lifted a whole lot of dust off the ground because it's quite dry out there, many of those areas are still drought affected."

The lifted dust had been carried by the winds into Sydney.

"I've not seen anything like this before," Ms Golding said.

The reddish haze was expected to fade as the sun got higher in the sky, Ms Golding said. The haze had turned from a crimson red to orange by about 7am, and then faded to yellow by about 7.30am.

But it was not known what would happen to the dust."

Dust turns Sydney sky red (links to video & photos, including a really fabulous one of The Coathanger)


Central Coast Ferries (Woy Woy etc. ferries) said:

"Ferries cancelled until further notice due to low visibilty and poor conditions as a result of the gale force winds and dust storm. Call skippers on 0418631313 for info on resumption of services predicted for this arvo."

It's clear now so they might be back on but it's still bloody blowy.

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.

Bloody wet

It is too bloody wet and too bloody dark for walkies. It is this dark. Took that in 2008 but it's the same dark this week only wetter.

Anyways, here's some I took last week when the sun was out.



Rocks and yachts at Koolewong.

Looking north-north-east up towards East Gosford/Springfield. The low ground in the left background is the low bit of Tascott/Point Clare and Longnose (Pt Frederick) and the flat hill on the right is Kincumba Mountain.




Mangroves beside Brisbane Water Drive. The bare-branched one isn't bare-branched because it's winter. It's just dead. Mangroves are evergreen, like most Australian trees. It's mostly the imported species of trees that are deciduous.




Jetty building equipment near Woy Woy wharf.




Jetty building equipment near Woy Woy wharf.

That's Pelican Island in the near background, with the pointy hill of Saratoga behind it.




Woy Woy from Brisbane Water Drive

The pines are at the war memorial on Brick Wharf Road, the white building with the dark side is the fish and chip shop, the red-roofed building is a storage thingy either for the fish and chip shop or the commercial wharf in front of it. I forget.

The square white building is Roma (now St. Vinnie's), the two-storey building beside it is the pub (Woy Woy Hotel, the CWA is the low grey roof in front of the pub.

The ferry wharf is all those white pylons in the water and that big gum is in Anderson Park, a wee park behind the other pub.


Not drowning, wading

As soggy as it is here in Woy Woy, our rain is fuck-all compared to what they're copping up north.

"The worst drought in South-East Queensland's history is over." That's what the Queensland Premier said about the flooding in Brissie. Give that pollie an award for understatement.

Brissie (Brisbane) is a fucking disaster area. Brissie is one of Australia's bigger cities. It has about 2 million peeps. And it's built on a flood plain.

Thousands of peeps around the Queensland/NSW border were told to pack up and bugger off to higher ground. And maybe something has been learnt from the Victorian bushfires because they went and they went without a murmur. (Apart from a few argumentative types of course, but you always get them.)

The good news is Lake Eyre is filling with trickle-down from the flooding in Queensland a couple of months back (during the Victorian bushfires). Lake Eyre is a fucking huge salt lake in South Australia. Since 1885 it has filled six times.

Mappage:

Australia, with Queensland highlighted (New South Wales is immediately below Queensland)

A river runs through it (Satellite photo showing why Brissie is currently flooded)

Luscious satellite photo of Lake Eyre


Speaking of water

Lately I've been hoicking my carcass up to North Gosford and Wyoming and the like for walkies.

And not loving it. They are too far from the water. I like walking near the water. There's no two ways around it.

So I'm temporarily re-focussing my walkies to only towns and suburbs that border on the water.

That includes, from south to north:

Pretty Beach (started but not finished)
Hardys Bay (started but not finished)
Killcare
Killcare Heights
Empire Bay (started but not finished)
Bensville
Kincumber South
Kincumber (started but not finished)
Green Point
Rocky Point (part of Green Point)
Ironbark Point (part of Green Point)



(Walkies Map May 2009)

The purple bit is what I've temporarily crossed off my list.

The orange lines outline my walkies target area. The filled-in orange bits are already walked.

The blank islands are uninhabited and have no roads. The green lines are landscape contours lines indicating hills and ridges.

Walked so far:

Woy Woy Peninsula:
(clockwise from station)

Woy Woy (station)
Blackwall
Orange Grove
Booker Bay
Ettalong
Umina, Ocean Beach & Umina Beach
Pearl Beach
Patonga, Dark Corner & Brisk Bay
Woy Woy South/Correa Bay

The Bays:

(where the fires were, next to Woy Woy)
Horsfield Bay (Deadmans Bay)
Phegans Bay
Woy Woy Bay
Parks Bay (old/semi-official name, part of Koolewong)

Clockwise round Brisbane Water from Woy Woy:

Koolewong /Murphys Bay
Tascott
Noonan Point (old/semi-official name, part of Tascott & Point Clare)
Point Clare
Fagans Bay
West Gosford (started but not finished, outside revised target area)
Gosford (started but not finished)
Point Frederick (Longnose)
Caroline Bay (part of East Gosford)
East Gosford (started but not finished)
Peeks Point
Springfield (started but not finished, outside revised target area)
Erina (started but not finished)
Yattalunga
Saratoga
Davistown
Kincumber (started but not finished)
Empire Bay (started but not finished)
St Huberts Island
Daleys Point (started but not finished)
Fishermans Bay
Hardys Bay (started but not finished)
Pretty Beach
Wagstaffe
Kourung Gourong Point (part of Wagstaffe)

'Started but not finished' doesn't mean I've abandoned that walk. It just means it's now outside my revides target are. Plus I'm just a random bastard these days.

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)

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.

Paperbark Forest

(Woy Woy walkies)

Missed the Everglades Wetland talk completely. Buggered off to Point Clare in the morning having completely forgotten the talk was on in Woy Woy. Scampered back in time to see the last of the organisers leaving. D'oh!


Everglades Wetland Woy Woy (Click for embiggened versions)

Everglades Wetland is the proper name of the Paperbark Forest. It is a narrow silver of bushland beside the golf course on Dunban Road in Woy Woy.

This photo is the lagoon. The floating weed in the left foreground is alligator weed, according to one of the Dear Old Things. Got here from South America a while back in the ballast of a ship.

The trees are mostly paperbarks (Melaleuca quinquenervia, with a casuarina (she-oak, Allocasuarina) poking its head up there in the left of the photo. The casuarinas have a beautiful sound, a soft rushing howl in the wind.

The reeds are some sort of reed I can't find anything out about. Can't find much at all on the Everglades Wetland online. This is off some wildlife website:

"The lagoon...habitat for birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals." (CEN, includes map)

So it's home to various native birds and beasties. Plus a few golf balls no doubt, given that the golf course is only a fence away.



The bark of a paperbark in the wetland

The foliage of the local paperbarks is like this and not like the photo at the top of the Wiki page. Smallish flat tough leaves, wee nuts in short rows along the twigs, small creamy white and pale yellow flowers.

The Aborigines used to and still use the bark of the paperbark for all sorts of things from making cradles for babies and shrouds for the dead, bandages for wounds, sleeping mats, humpies (tent-like shelters) and canvasses for paintings. There are some paperbark paintings in Australian art galleries but now most Aboriginal artists use yer bog standard painting canvas.

Modern science is using the oil of the paperbark as an anti-fungal for all sorts of things, including Siamese Fighting Fish. (Wiki)



Casuarina foliage



See original photo at Wiki

Casuarinas have needles instead of leaves. Very fine needles which, if you have a good squint at them up close, have got segments like tiny wee bamboo poles.


Fake raffle targeting Woy Woy's elderly

Tell yer granny not to open the door to strangers.

From the NSW Police site:

"Bogus raffle ticket sellers steal from elderly
26 Sep 2008

Police are urging elderly residents to be on lookout for bogus raffle ticket sellers after four robberies on the Central Coast this month.

On each occasion, a group of teenagers have stolen money from each victims home after offering to sell them what turn out to be fake raffle tickets.

The group have falsely claimed to be selling tickets on behalf of a local youth or netball club.

They have been able to enter each home either by being invited in after gaining the victims trust, or by being allowed to use the victims’ toilet.
...
“We are advising residents to...[ask] to see some form of identification".


Local linkage

Steve's Virtual Tours

Michael's photos of Woy Woy & nearby