Bullimah Beach & the Great Manly Debate

(Bouddi/Killcare walkies #6? 7? Technically it's #2 of the Killcare walkies but Hardys Bay and Killcare look like one small suburb when yer walking them and they're both on the Bouddi so let's go ahead and call it Bouddi/Killcare #6 or 7.)

Lovely day today for walkies and photos and I'm stuck inside with an aching gut and a pile of work I'm ignoring. Been off sick for days.




Bulimah Beach. Tiny wee beach, as you can see, tucked in between Putty Beach and Gerrin Point on the Bouddi peninsula. Or the Bouddi, as she is known locally. That's bood-eye not bood-ee and bood rhymes with hood not food.




Where the top photo's taken from. Beach Drive (lower) and Grandview Crescent Putty Beach/Killcare. Technically, the suburb is Killcare but who wants to live at a suburb name when they can live at a beach name?

Had a trot round the streets of Putty Beach/Killcare. This is every-street walkies I'm doing after all. Like anywhere with views, there's plenty of big pricey houses looming along the view streets but, like everywhere around Woy Woy/Brisbane Water, there's plenty of the nice quiet old places left.




Just for pretty. Hill-top above Grandview Crescent Killcare/Putty Beach.




This nice quiet old place looks to me to be the perfect place to walk home from the beach to.

After a nice long day messing about at the beach, you'd plod along the road in yer thongs, lairy beach towel over yer shoulder, head down and a fine crust of salt still drying on yer skin. Along the road with the banksia trees all along one side, up a bit of a hill, through a lane, round a corner and there's home ahead of you. Cool shady veranda with its scatter of old dogs and deck chairs. There's icy cold lemonade in the old Kelvinator and and there'll be chops and mashed potatoes and peas for dinner to finish off a splendiferous summer's day.

Heaven.

Bonus photo: On the beach (sand, surf, peeps, dogs, `nother view of Bullimah Beach)


Is it is or is it ain't?



This is a close-up of the view photo from the Putty Beach post. Much more detail at this size. I got a new camera but it's only a PLC (pissy little camera) with 10MP res so this much detail means the thing is pretty close.

Hmm. Look at that wee faint headland to the left of the big clear one. Didn't notice that bit before.

So, is this big cliffy bit Manly/North Head or the Careel Headland or Long Reef? Opinions vary.

Okay, opening up the map of Sydney. Getting out ruler to check out this "Manly is only 30 kays" (18.64 miles) business... Hmm.




Bangelly Head (Careel Headland Res) is tall enough to be the close one. Long Reef is long but would not be visible from the Putty Beach angle. Manly is tall enough and cliffy enough and sticks out far enough but has gotta be the wee faint headland furtherest away.

Looks like it's Careel and Manly. Michael and Steveo win this debate and the admiration of their peers.

`Course when Michael goes up there to see what it says at Gerrin Point look-out, it might be a whole `nother debate.


Manly stuff

While we're on the Manly/North Head subject, we may as well have a gander at some links and a factoid.

In WWII there were fortifications up there. North Battery on North Head had two 9.2 inch Mk X guns, the Shelley Battery (Shelly Head, Manly) had one QF 12 pounder gun and, across the other side of the mouth of the Harbour, the Signal Battery on South Head had two 6 inch Mk XI guns.

Manly Ferry photo, factoids & video
North Head Quarantine Station (outsides & insides of buildings)
Quarantine Station factoids
Old photos of the Quarantine Station (And old rock carvings made by the quarantined)
Manly (harbour side) factoids & photos
Manly Beach (north side) photos & factoids

Enjoy. I'm off to lay with my feet in the sun and an icy cold lemonade in my hand.

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

La Nina

It just stopped raining. No, wait, it's starting again. Been raining all night and all day. No danger of flash floods I hasten to add. Even it pissed down for forty nights and forty nights here it'd drain off toot sweet into the estuary.

This La Nina business is very nice what with the rain and everything after the drought and the relevant gods should note that I am not complaining about the rain but it is crap weather for walkies and photography.

Thus we are looking at some old photos today and a couple that are just for pretty.




Historic photo of some blokes and a dingy at Woy Woy Bay about 100 years ago. Why the bloke in the 3 piece suit is wearing a 3 piece suit on a dingy expedition is beyond me. I s'pose they did that sorta thing back then.




Ocean Beach (Umina) postcard from 1924. Flogging the unsophisticated charms of Woy Woy's Ocean Beach to Sydneysiders. Nothing remains of those 2 boarding houses or the bus and the Umina Post Office now ekes out an existence in the back of a chemist.




1930s Woy Woy from Woy Woy Bay. Notice how many houses there aren't. Now the Peninsula's covered in houses. Here they're pretty much all clustered around the station.

The station is the wee white building at the end of that long jetty sticking out onto the low-tide mud flats, this side of the tracks.

The biggest building, pale roof, on the left of the road, is the old 200-seat cinema where the Woolworths supermarket is now.

The road heading towards the back of the photo from about a third of the way across from the left, is Blackwall Road on its way to Blackwall Mountain.




Umina Beach (lower left) and the Bouddi Peninsula (right) from Mount Ettalong.

Follow the beach up from the left bottom corner until it gets to a sharp bend. Follow the sand bar out to the right from that sharp bend. That's the big sandbar the ferries have to avoid as they come across from Palm Beach.



We're looking here across from Daleys Point to Blackwall Point (left, houses on Orange Grove Road) and Blackwall foreshore. That flat-topped pine tree is at the end of McMasters Road and Blackwall Road runs parallel to and behind the foreshore.