Views from a bridge

Booker Bay from The Rip Bridge

Look at that water. Still as. There was a cold cruel wind yesterday but otherwise it's been days and days of still blue skies. Magic winter weather.




Hardys Bay from The Rip Bridge

I love the swirly patterns on the water. Some of them are obviously boat tracks but the big patches seem to be made by the sandbars. Which we have heaps of. Which is why we have the Great Dredging Debate

Ettalong knob/Booker Bay sandbar

Somewhere in my increasingly large photo archive at Flickr is a nice view from the mountain showing most of the sandbars. Can I find the bastard? No, I cannot. Didn't tag the effing thing properly, did I!

The Rip Bridge from Hardys Bay (plus photos of Bustling Downtown Hardys Bay)


Stupid health

I ain’t on death’s door or nothing. Just not terribly sprightly at the moment. Had to have more tests last week. Dr says I’m to stay off the booze for a year, a whole year for fuck’s sake, and go easy on the pizza and bacon.

So I’ve chucked out all the bacon and bought myself a T-shirt that says “designated driver”. Sigh.


Local linkage

First one is Woy Woy hero bunnies at Biker Bunnies.


Second one is some keen bushwalkers have bunged up a new local freebies website called wildwalks.com.au.

They've got “various walks in the Brisbane Water and Bouddi national parks including Warrah Trig, Patonga, Maitland Bay and Staples Lookout.”

It’s got some good local photos and some chat about each walk and you can print out a map to take with you. Holding it up the right way is yer own responsibility.


B day

Shit. I've spent so much time on the first B of the day I'm in danger of missing the second.

Saturday is B day:

Blog
Barbie
Booze
Bonking (if my sex drive is at home to visitors)

(Tuesday is soylent green day.)

Warm winter sun

(Random Woy Woy walkies)



Bloody cold in the wind a couple of days ago, with the gusts up off the snow. But other than that, we’ve had days of blue blue winter skies. The warm winter sun has been glorious. Perfect for walkies and photos.

This picture is from Booker Bay Road Booker Bay. That’s Booker Bay in the foreground and Rileys Bay across the water there.




Taken from the same place. Note the wee cut-outs of cats along the jetty there. They seemed to be working. It was the only jetty with no duck shit on it.





Look at that red. Glorious. It’s been down to 1 degree (about 3 Farhenheit) overnight. Some years it doesn’t get that cold and, if you want a good red on your poinsettias, you gotta put them in the fridge. They’re not native to Australia.

The Rip Bridge

Took me a lot of walkies to get all the angles I wanted on this landmark. Here they are all in one go.




The Rip Bridge from Guyra Street Booker Bay. My favourite view.

It's called The Rip Bridge because it goes over The Rip, which is a bit of fast-flowing water in the narrow bit between the Woy Woy peninsula and Daleys Point. When the ferries go through it their engines have to strain a bit and a kayaker can paddle as fast as they like on The Rip and get nowhere.




Where it is.

The Rip Bridge is a Brisbane Water landmark. You can see it from all the way up Brisbane Water Drive as far as Point Clare. It's one of the busiest bottlenecks on the Central Coast. And when the big fires in 2006 closed the F3 motorway, the fire trucks had to come down the eastern side of Brisbane Water and across the bridge to get to The Bays next to Woy Woy.




Daleys Point end of the bridge. The road that goes over it is called Maitland Bay Drive on the Woy Woy side and on the bridge itself, then it changes its name to Daley Avenue, then at the roundabout at the top of the St Huberts Island ramp, it changes its name again to Empire Bay Drive. This takes some explaining when giving directions to lost tourists.




Just behind the railing about the middle you can see a bit of The Rip. The ridges in the background are the western side of Brisbane Water. The two mangrove islets in the left middle are nameless. St Hubert's is the island on the right (houses) and behind that is the hill of Saratoga.




Fishermans Bay, where the moving speedboat is, and Rileys Bay. Looking east-north-east from the bridge.



Booker Bay from the Woy Woy end of the bridge. Money lives in Booker Bay. It didn't used to.




The Rip Bridge from Blackwall Mountain. Orange Grove Road in the foreground. The houses at the left end of the bridge are at Daleys Point.




Thar she blows. The Rip Bridge from Daley Avenue Daleys Point.


Bloody idiots

There's been a spate of bashings of foreign students of Australian universities. Bashing foreign uni students is a fucking stupid idea. Particularly in a recession. They bring a shitload of money into the country.

International students (what uni's call foreign citizen students) pay around three times the money an Australian citizen pays to go to uni. So if a B.A. costs a citizen 20,000 it costs an international student 60,000. If a medical degree costs 60,000 it costs an international student 180,000.

They pay higher fees which means the uni can afford to stay open to educate Australian citizens when the government is taking shitloads of funding from education to spend on wars. (Former Prime Miniature John Wanker Howard, this means you).

They pay for accommodation. This is money into the local housing market.

They eat. This is money into the local shops.

They phone home. This is money into the local telephone companies, the same phone companies you use.

They go places on buses and trains. This is money into the local bus-drivers' pay packets.

Think you're doing Australia a favour bashing international students? You're doing it an injury. Grow a brain, numb nuts.


Right! I'm off for the long weekend. Running a mere 24 hours late and with a premature case of title="Ducktionary">shagger's back. Argh.

Have a good one, Straylya.

Old villages

The line of red dots in the centre is not an old village but the WWII emergency airstrip. It was gravel and its remains are occasionally dug up in someone's backyard.

The other isolated and grouped red dots are the old villages of the Woy Woy Peninsula:

Woy Woy (uppermost group)
Umina/West Street (lowest group)
Booker Bay (3 dots on right)
Pearl Beach (2 dots at bottom)


Woy Woy village:



Railway Street from the railway station



Masonic Hall Railway Street from the railway station



CWA Anderson Park, opposite the (current) ferry wharf. CWA stands for Country Womens' Association. The equivalent of the W.I. in the UK, not sure what it's American equivalent is.



Old Woy Woy Hotel, the one reputed to be built from bricks nicked from the construction of the railway tunnel.



Woy Woy Library, corner of Oval Avenue. Used to be the old Council Chambers in the 1930s but now the Peninsula's part of Gosford City Council and is administered from Mann Street Gosford.



Soldiers' Park, now known as Woy Woy War Memorial Park. On the water right next to the fish and chip shop.



Woy Woy Football Oval in Oval Avenue, next to the Library.



Woy Woy Wharf. Central part of the village then and now. Within 100 yards of the railway station, the shops and both pubs.

More photos of Woy Woy village at Bustling Downtown Woy Woy


Umina village (West Street):



West Street in 2005. West Street is not substantially changed in the last 2 years.
(Ignore the red circle, it marks a gas thingy up on the ridge.)



Shop down the quiet end of the shops, past the pub.



The pub, on the corner of Trafalgar Avenue. I have no front view of this pub. A glaring omission possibly caused by propping up the bar.



This servo (petrol station) stands where a cinema did in the 1950s, at the Ocean Beach Road roundabout at the south end of West Street.



The West Street anomaly.



Night safe on the former bank. Now the bike shop and now painted blue.



The Catholic church. Rumour has it this place is scheduled for demolition. I saw the drawings for the units to go up in their place but I was drunk at the time and may have imagined them.



Purple people eater, a recent addition to the old village of Umina.


Ettalong village:



The Excrescence. Where the carpark of this thing is there was the Ettalong Memorial Club, a three-storey lump in pebble-crete from whose open windows could be heard the aerobics instructor exhorting her ladies to lift! and lift! and lift!



Drop your pants/ A soul is wasted when there is no aim". Thus quoth the sign at the drycleaners opposite The Excrescence.

That's it for my Ettalong village photos. Hadn't realised it before but I've got bugger all from there. Must remedy!


Booker Bay village:



King's Store & Booker Bay General Store Booker Bay Road Booker Bay.



Old Brick Shop opposite King's Store Booker Bay


This post is about the villages of the Peninsula but it's also revealed some serious gaps in my photo collection. Mostly in Ettalong. So we all learnt summat today. Bless.


P.S.

I don't pass on chain email but this one is amusing.


For those of you who watch what you eat,
here's the final word on nutrition and health.
It's a relief to know the truth
after all those conflicting
nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Australians.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Australians.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Australians.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Australians.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Australians.

So eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you!