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.

On the water

Only things and angles of things seen from the water are in this post.



The bridge nestled into a bit of bush at the Daleys Point end. The other end is at Booker Bay.

The Rip Bridge




Old wooden boat in Hardys Bay. Is it me or does this boat have a certain ferry-ness about its lines?




Ramp to St Huberts Island. A very well-known feature of the landscape to locals but a sloping ramp to an island is probably not a common sight.

It's not as steep as it looks. A person with a 40-a-day habit could get up there without an ambulance.




From the road and other shores all you can really see of Daleys Point is all those balconied houses from the 1970s to now.

But nestled in among them, dozing in the sun, are little old houses bearing witness to the price of land on the waterfront just a few decades ago.




1950s and 1940s houses nestled down among the big balconied houses.




Merritts Wharf, at the end of Rickard Road Empire Bay.

Meritts Wharf Estate 1912

The "Anniversary Day" referred to in that link is now called Australia Day




Perched above Merrits Wharf on Rickard Road Empire Bay. You can see it in the photo above.

The style could be Federation Arts & Crafts and it could be Federation Queen Anne (both circa 1890 - c. 1915) but I think it's Victorian Rustic Gothic (circa 1840 - c. 1890) with its Rustic ripped off. The Rustic bits are generally wooden bargeboards and that rough-ish stone you can just see under all that ivy.

There are only a few houses I really fancy. This is one of them.


Clean forgot to blog yesterday. Got to bed at dawn. Still got that stunned mullet feeling today. Off to another barbie in a bit. Sunshine, bit of breeze, the scent of firelighters, beer and sausage sangers. Bliss.


Excellent photo

Ghost Ship by New Found Hero (Glen Holdaway) on Flickr. Clicking on the "go large" link is recommended.


Dear Old Games

Been thinking about death and old age recently, what with losing so many of my own oldies. My grandmothers were both in their nineties but my grandfathers died young and all around me are old men drinking themeselves into the grave. I'm fucked if I'll end up like that.

My Gran and Olive Riley were good Dear Old Role Models. I'm aiming for the way Gran and Olive did it and the way the Masters Games crowd are doing it.

On the telly last week there was a thing about some bloke of around 70 who rode 50 kays to get to the start line and then won his race then entered another. Can't find the bloody link but I remember he planned to ride home after. Bugger me, that's fit.


Aussie Aussie Aussie

Posted a couple of weeks back about the Woy Woy local at the Beijing Paralympics and missed a perfect opportunity to start a chant:

Aussie Aussie Aussie! Woy Woy Woy!

Bewildered Americans click here

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.