A little house by the water

For long-winded and boring reasons, I can't yet upload the photos I took while I was offline. So we'll look at a few of my favourite wee old houses around Woy Woy and Brisbane Water.



#1 (Map reference)
We'll start with this lovely old place overlooking the water from Mulhall Street Wagstaffe. Its owner, Geoff, tells us it was built in 1907 and the bargeboards (those curly white boards on the edge of the roof) are original.

Geoff on the house's history




#2
On the water at Leonora Avenue Davistown. Just a few steps from the Lintern Street ferry stop and there you are. Bloody nice spot for a house.




#3
A home among the gum trees. Just like the song says. Henderson Road Saratoga, looking across the Lintern Channel to Woy Woy.




#4
Sorrento House Sorrento Road Empire Bay. One street back from the water and 30 seconds from the Empire Bay ferry stop. Must be 18 months now since this one was bulldozed.




#5
Albany Street Point Frederick (Longnose), looking down into Caroline Bay and across at Peeks Point.




#6
Croke Cottage, in the grounds of the old orphanage at Kincumber South. Out the back door and twenty yards down to the water. The old orphanage ferry stop is about 60 yards away. A very quiet spot at the mouth of the Kincumber Broadwater.




#7
Twin houses at Parks Bay, just across the water (and the railway tracks) from Woy Woy.




#8
Meena Street Woy Woy Bay, circa 1908, just across the water from Woy Woy. Sharp-eyed persons will have noticed this lovely old place in the background of interviews with Belinda "Anger Management Issues" Neal, of Iguana-gate fame.




#9
Lovely old house on Ocean View Road Ettalong. This is its back view. It looks across Lance Webb Reserve to Wagstaffe and, further, to Barrenjoey Head.




#10
Cedar Crescent Woy Woy, looking over the tops of the houses opposite across the water to St Huberts Island and Davistown. That glassed-in veranda is the perfect spot to settle down on a cold winter morning with the sun coming in and a nice hot cuppa tea and a bacon sarnie.




Match the # numbers on the photos to the map.

(Thepurple dots are the route of the ferry Saratoga, the other dots are the route of the Cockatoo ferry Codock II.)


P.S.

Is it just me or does everyone hear that line "I had an uncle who once played for red star belgrade" in Sexuality as 'I had an uncle who once laid a red star brigade'?

In like Flynn

(Random walkies in Woy Woy)

There was about an hour of blue sky yesterday. As soon as it appeared I snatched up the camera and rushed out for some some snaps.

Wasn't quick enough in the afternoon and got a power blackout halfway through blogging. Turns out there was some damage from that big storm last year and yesterday's storm was the last little push it needed. One of the Dear Old Things was all of a twitter, convinced we were going to be out for days again but it's fixed now.




Woy Woy Bay from Woy Woy. Quiet weekday water with the Woy Woy bus terminal (bottom centre) and the railway station (bottom right).




Equipment raft, pile driver & footbridge from Woy Woy Wharf.

The blue raft has piles and stuff for making jetties. The pile driver is for bunging in the piles to support the jetties. There's hundreds of private and dozens of public jetties on Brisbane Water.

The hill in the middle distance is Parks Bay/Koolewong. The one behind it is Tascott.






Grevillea acanthifolia. Australian native wildflowers popular with gardeners.


Partial solar eclipse yesterday

Buggeration. The storm yesterday was lovely and there was a wee glance of the eclipse. It was a partial eclipse of the sun by the moon. Didn't get a usable photo of my own, sod it, but here's a nice big specky one: Dramatic views of solar eclipse through cloud

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.

View over Woy Woy Bay

(Random walkies)



Having a bit of a crap week with the health. Rather tiresome. Tottered into Woy Woy mid morning and snapped this then tottered back home. Woy Woy Bay is one of my favourite views in the Brisbane Water/Greater Gosford area. It's shape and quietness are pleasing.

In the foreground you can see Woy Woy Station (right) and the bus station (centre), part of the walkway from the station to the Clocktower Building (green roof, right) and the rusty tin roof of the Masonic Hall in the right corner. All on Railway Street.

Gosford

Mind, my week was nothing on that of the poor bastard who died in the Gosford fire on Wednesday night. The guy's name is Edgar Griesberg and on Tuesday night he was working late at Gerry's Electricals, his business at the corner of Donnison Street and Albany Street North in Gosford. It's in today's Central Coast Express.

The building collapsed and presumably will be completely demolished. Normally when I add a photo to my Gone set on Flickr it's because an old house has been replaced by a block of units or something. Pity this addition isn't happening under those circumstances. My sympathies to the Griesbergs.



Gerry's Electricals on the corner of Donnison Street & Albany Street North Gosford. A pleasant old factory unit just up the hill from the Gosford Court and behind the Marketplace shopping centre. Built in the 1940s I think. I never got round to posting it when I walked those streets in the winter of 2006. I was going to take a front-on photo but never got round to it.