Ye olde Post Offices

You should be hearing this post in a faint scratchy voice frequently interrupted by a hacking cough and intemperate language. I am definitely Not Well. And definitely Utterly Fed Up. It's one of these new-fangled wogs that's resistant to anti-biotics and takes a while to shift.




This wee old cottage is the former Saratoga Post Office, on Steyne Road, facing Point Clare across Brisbane Water. It has been posted on a stamp-fanciers' board (ta for the acknowledgement & link, Skippy), along with a lovely old photo of when it was the P.O..

Also check out the old Matcham PO further down the board. It is barely bigger than a backyard dunny.




One of the old Kincumber Post Offices, on the corner of Avoca Drive & Davies Street, opposite Frost Reserve.

Run by William George Humphrey from 1945 to the 1990s. Before that the P.O. was down the road a bit at Manasseh Frost's place (below).



You can still see the old "Kincumber Post Office" sign up under the upholsterer's sign.



The old PO Boxes are still there, albeit closed up. I wonder if the upholsterer uses the backs of them as a cupboard?




The other of Kincumber's old Post Offices, and Manasseh Frost's Store (1901), just a couple of blocks down the hill from the other old P.O..

The sign on the right of the building reads "M Frost Kincumber Cash Store".




Sheets of tin over the top of each stone stump to stop the ants eating the wood of the building.

More on Frost's Post Office


Woy Woy's own old P.O.'s are long gone but you can see their photos up in the current P.O. (opposite the library, just near the station) and here, second from the right.

There's the old "PMG" (Post master General) lettering on a Woy Woy manhole cover on Brisbane Water Drive between the Bay View pub and the footbridge.

You can have fish and chips in an old Post Office (albeit a seventies one) by getting the ferry to Empire Bay and walking to the orange and brown building you can see from the wharf.

Recommended fiction for stamp-fanciers is Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. It is amusing even to non-philatelists and has a hero called Moist von Lipwig.


Snippets

Old news but worth having: Australian researcher saves the planet

"An Australian researcher has won an international prize for her plan to wrap a giant asteroid with reflective sheeting to stop it colliding with the earth and destroying all life.

Such an impact would have the force of 110,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs if the asteroid, which actually exists, hits the planet in 2036, said Mary D'Souza, a PhD student with the University of Queensland's School of Engineering."

Click for the spectacular digital mock-up picture, stay for the scary asteroid stats.

Woy Woy girl competes in her fifth consecutive Paralympic Games - Australian basketball capt. Liesl Tesch in Beijing


Right then. I'm logging out before I crash on the keyboard. Thank you very kindly for all the hugs and haiku and tips. It makes a person get well a bit faster than by mere meds alone.

Warm winter sky

(Saratoga walkies #7)

Brass monkeys yesterday. A wind came up off the snow down south and froze the tits off the Central Coast. Bloody freezing again this morning but the sky is as blue as blue can be and the sun is warm.



Gymea Lily (Doryanthes excelsa). Magnificent beasts they are. This one and its friend are quite short, just a couple of metres high. They get to 6 metres (19.7 feet) and the Central Coast is at the centre of their natural habitat. You can see them in the bush along Patonga Drive.

This one and its friend are on the Paficic Highway at West Gosford between OfficeWorks and the lights. Which is not Saratoga. Got 'em on the way home.

Grow yer own Gymea - Gardening Australia Fact Sheet
Australian National Botanic Gardens - great photo of opened blooms



Reaching for the sun on Brighton Road. The blooms are as soft as they look. No idea what the plant is though. Seen it all over the Peninsula and Brisbane Water and previously mistaken it for a bottlebrush. It is not a bottlebrush. Might be a mimosa.

Plenty of flowering still going on in the autumn sun, paperbacks, whatsits, daisies having another go. Saw a few golden wattles touched by gold today. They'll be blazing in full glory soon.


(Embiggen)

Silvery roofs, silvery water, Point Frederick & East Gosford from Brooklyn Road.



Blazing colour fit to warm the cockles of yer heart. A whatsit flowering on Steyne Road.


Bayside Burglar

They finally got a description for the bastard. "Caucasian [white], 25-40 years old with greying-blonde hair" says the Advocate.

37 burglaries in 19 days this guy's done. 37 in 19 days. All between the hours of 3PM and 6PM.

He's hitting the Woy Woy Peninsula so far. And targetting Dear Old Things, walking in through the door while they're in the garden, forcing side windows, walking off with handbags and wallets.

Go round and check on your Dear Old Thing.

Steyne Road

(Saratoga walkies #5-ish)

Warm as toast today. Warm autumn sun, a nice cool breeze and a blue blue sky. Lovely and nippy in the mornings and warm afternoons. Perfect.



Steyne Road from the View Street Wharf Saratoga. Across the waterline there you can see 3 Federation (circa 1890 - c. 1915) cottages. Between the 2nd and 3rd is an eighties or nineties house. Looks eighties with those round columns on the veranda though the colour scheme is very now.

Behind that row of houses you can see a fifties house (white) ans another circa 1900 house (white, green roof) though that place could be right up to the 1940s.

On the right, lurking behind the palms and that lovely big frangipani, is a seventies place. There were dozens of 2 storey places built along the Brisbane Water foreshores in the seventies and you know how I hate seventies architecture.

In the last row of houses up the hill there's mostly seventies places again, short cul-de-sacs driven up into the bush during the seventies population boom. In between there's a fair amount of eighties reno's of forties houses and fresh builds. This area of Saratoga hasn't seen as many new houses and reno's as the area around Veterans Hall. The commuter ferry doesn't come round here.

Those circa 1900 houses were really tricky to photograph. From the road they're all but invisible. A lot of them've sold the backyard and there's another house in it. Though there was one place with its original mulberry tree, an elderly lemon tree, a pumpkin patch and the original dunny.



A small weatherboard cottage on Steyne Road soaking up the autumn sun. Love that faded red roof against the white boards. 1940s I'd say, judging from the age of the sides and that great mass of fishbone fern at the front, maybe once a holiday house now lived in full time but just as likely to be the family home built just after the war.



Another cottage on Steyne Road. I'd want to see the other side of this one before I put an age to it. I think the back's older than the front. The roof shape and the front look 1940s and so does that fence and gate. Those windows at the front are not narrow enough to be earlier than 1920 I think. I like the colours. Very cottage-y and smart.

This place and the photos above look across the water to Gosford, Longnose (Point Frederick) and East Gosford. Only the cemetery-cum-park on the tip of Longnose is visible at this angle. (Similar view, map)


Fillum

Went and saw Hot Fuzz yesterday. It was bloody hilarious. Pisstake, filmed in a little village Somerset, kick-arse soundtrack, Lurch, dead-beat detectives, runaway swans, explosions, murder, nutters, a priest who says "fuck off Grasshopper", high street shoot-outs and the good guys win in the end. And that bit where the guy gets clonked by a bit of Perp Dec, very funny in a very bloody way.