Sick Note #243

Argh!

Lovely winter's day in Woy Woy. Sun's been out all day. Could be outside running round enjoying myself. Instead, I've been groaning in bed clutching the guts since yesterday. My stupid poo tubes are having another hissy fit. I am not amused.


Gone



The wee house on the right is gone now. Couple of weeks back I think but I kept forgetting. Pity. Twin houses are fun. But Lefty's still there.

They It is at Parks Bay, just across the water (and the railway tracks) from Woy Woy. Head out from Woy Woy going along Brisbane Water Drive towards Gosford. As soon as you get through the lights and past the pub, take a squiz to yer left and you'll see it as soon as you get to the railway bridge. Which is always sooner than you think it will be.

Local linkage

Winter floraland and the Bluetongue footy fixtures in this month's ferry newsletter.

Ta, Michael, for the heads up about the comments thingo disappearing from the last post. All my sidebar stuff is down the bottom of the page too. Fuck knows what that's about. I think that happened once before then came good. Anyways, I'm way too tired to work it out today. Comments are still working on this post.

I'm going back to bed with a hot-water bottle and the remote.

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.)

Floating life

(Hardys Bay walkies #2)

Hardys Bay is across the water from Ettalong, the suburb of the Woy Woy Peninsula where the Palm Beach ferry docks. It's on the Bouddi Peninsula along with Wagstaffe, Pretty Beach, Putty Beach, Lobster Beach, Box Head and Killcare. (Map)

Hardys is chockers with wooden boats. Today's lot are a fraction of what's there.



Bellbird Star moored off the public jetty at Hardys Bay. Looking smart in her fresh paint.



And here she is again with her friend Alma. Love that little flourish over Alma nameplate.



Don't know the names of these two. They were just pleasing to the eye. They were moored next to the Bellbird and Alma.

Those houses in the background are on Araluen Drive Hardys Bay and the aptly named Pretty Beach is on the other side of the ridge and Wagstaffe beyond it.



Is this a launch? My knowledge of boats is restricted to knowing which end goes forward (the pointy one). Moored near the public jetty at Hardys Bay.


(To the embiggulator!)

Lady Kendall II (the ferry) and a green yacht in Hardys Bay. The green yacht (right of centre) is very interesting. I've never seen a design like that before.

I like this view. The ridges make a lovely composition of earth, water and sky and the sun haze softens the ridges and makes Koolewong and Point Clare in the background look like far away mountains.



Is the house in the middle there the narrowest house on Brisbane Water? Might be a couple of inches wider than this one in Woy Woy.

Wagstaff Avenue Wagstaffe. The blue house on the left you saw Monday, it's the holiday rental beside the Wagstaffe Wharf.

Gone



Got a photo of this one just in time. The bulldozers have been at work and its gone now. In its place there will be some of the most generic and boring luxury units I've ever laid eyes on. That's them on the sign.

It was Sorrento House Sorrento Road Empire Bay. Previously blogged.


Today I was going to have a good crow about how more Australians win the Nobel Prize than any other nation, including America. This is particularly smirk-worthy in the light of America's population being more than 10 times bigger than Australia's.

However, I'll keep my crowing to a minimum out of respect for those poor bastards who copped it yesterday at Virginia Tech.

Renown

Beautiful storm last night. I was up past my bedtime watching it. The first one was medium strength and just rumbled and flashed a bit. The second one was good and loud. Several whacking great crashes of thunder right overhead and the flashes of lightning were enormous.

Missed the eclipse on Saturday night. I was going to watch it but I got a bit elephant's (drunk). Have marked the August eclipse in my diary as 'total eclipse DON'T GET DRUNK'. Righto.

Didn't go to the Parade. Went to a mate's instead and we sat there on the back lawn getting slowly plastered. Mardi Gras has pretty much passed me by this year. I promised myself I'd see Swan Lake, the one with all the guy swans, but didn't get off my arse.

Watched the Kylie concert last night on Aunty. I'm not that much of a Kylie fan, musically, but she's a deadset diva and a bloody good entertainer. There's plenty of performers but not that many good entertainers.

Enough rambling. On with the photos. These are from last week. It's dark and overcast today and I'm sitting at home with a cuppa tea.



Little old house at the end of Kendall Road Empire Bay. Could be older but it looked like 1940s. It was probably surrounded by bush back then. Now the street is full and it's surrounded by seventies houses.



24 Kendall Road Empire Bay. Looks like I got here a day or two late for a good photo. Bugger.

It's in my hist list as "house .. 24 Kendall Rd, Empire Bay ... c. 1920". Looks like it was a small rectangular cottage with wooden interior walls.

There's nothing listed as heritage on either the Australian Heritage Council database or the NSW Heritage Office database. In the Gosford City Council notes for 2002 there's a motion to have the house in this photo and a lot of other historic buildings removed from the Heritage registers. That leaves them unprotected from development.


(Embiggulate)

See her? The old black and yellow ferry in the middle there. This is as close a picture as was possible with all the boats stacked up round the marina.

I can find nothing on the Renown on Google. I've never seen her out of her bay and I don't remember her name or picture in any of the library books. Speak up if you know.


(Embiggulate)

Her stern. To see her get the ferry (the Saratoga not the Codock) from the Woy Woy wharf to Empire Bay. Or turn off Empire Bay Drive at Greenfield Road and follow the signs to the Post Office or the wharf. She's visible from the wharf.