Fairlight to Fagans Bay

Got up in time for lunch today. Made a sandwich, bunged it on a plate, sat down in front of it and nearly chundered. The guts are playing me up again. Spent the last two nights on the bloody loo in a jumper. Am thoroughly shat off.

On the upside, it's good weather for staying indoors and sleeping. The sky is a uniform undercoat grey and it's just the right temperature for laying on the sofa under a quilt swearing at the crap on TV.



Went walkies at Point Clare last week. Off Brisbane Water Drive between the Point Clare roundabout and Fagans Park, down Collard Road, into Welwyn Avenue past Fairlight and left beside the underpass at the bottom of the street.

The cycleway goes from next to Woy Woy Wharf along the west side of Brisbane Water past Koolewong, Tascott, Point Clare, Fagans Bay and West Gosford and finishes in Gosford at the sailing club on Masons Parade. It's the route of the Woy Woy to Gosford Bay to Bay fun run and I'll be walking it again this year.


(Embiggen)

Just for pretty. A tree near the path.



Some people's gardens come right down to the path. With the backyards being so close to the path, resident dogs have plenty of cyclists and walkers to bark at all day.

That's Fagans Bay in the background.

The flowers I thought were rhododendrons but apparently they're not. I'm buggered if I know what they are then. I see the buggers everywhere and I've been calling them rhododendrons all this time.


(Embiggen)

These I know are bromeliads. One of the Dear Old Things downstairs has got a tiny greenhouse crammed to the brim with the buggers. Quite spectacular some of them are.


Okay. I'm going to settle down under the quilt and watch the Antiques Roadshow.

Anzac Day

It pissed down. In fact, it pissed down for three days straight. Monday, Tuesday and ANZAC Day. It pissed down on dawn services all over New South Wales and it blew a cold wind at the dawn service at Anzac Cove.


(Embiggen)

It stopped raining for just long enough to take some photos. There was supposed to be a parade through Woy Woy at 9.30 but it was rained out. Bummer.

The sign says:
"Gosford City Council
WOY WOY MEMORIAL PARK
A place of remembrance"

The coffin-shaped object in the left foreground says:
"LEST WE FORGET"

That's Pelican Island in the background then Saratoga.



The wording for all faces of the memorial is here in last ANZAC Day's post.



From the north-east corner looking towards Parks Bay.


(Embiggen)

Jump to plaque wordings

Some of the abbreviations on the plaques I know, some I'm having trouble getting explanations for. We'll start with the ones I know.

Not in any sort of order:
1st AIF/ 1 AIF - Australian Imperial Forces in World War One.
2nd AIF/ 2 AIF - Australian Imperial Forces in World War Two.
RAN - Royal Australian Navy
RN - [British] Royal Navy
RAAF - Royal Australian Air Force
L/CPL - Lance Corporal
AB - Able Seaman
LAC - Leading Aircraftsman
LS - Leading Seaman. My great-uncle was a Leading Seaman in the RAN. LSM amy also be Leading Seaman.
SGT - Sergeant
STD - Steward
TPR - Trooper
PTE - Private
Para. Btn. - Parachute Battalion.
SPR - Sapper. Wiki says: A sapper is an individual usually in British or Commonwealth military service. Called a combat engineer by the Americans, a pionier by the Germans and a génie by the French, a sapper may perform any of a variety of tasks under combat conditions. Such tasks typically include bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, demolitions, field defences as well as building, road and airfield construction and repair. In other words, the sapper's tasks now involve facilitating movement of allied forces and impeding movement of the enemy's. Sapper (abbreviated Spr) is the Royal Engineers' equivalent of Private.

These two I think I've got right:
F/AMB - Field Ambulance?
GNR - Gunner?

If you know what they are, bung it in the comments so we all know. This here is an ed-you-mick-ay-shun webthingy.

There's hundreds more at the Australian War Memorial Glossary.

Top row, left to right:
"A.B
P.CATSACOS
MERCHANT NAVY
3.7.76"

"NX52151
SPR
C.F.BARROW
2.F/CO.
2. A.I.F.
7.8.76"

"10963
L/CPL
AE.WOOLF
12.A.E.M.3.DIV.
1 A.I.F.
27.8.76"

"NX155362
SPR
R.G.WINSOR
2/1.A.F.C
2.A.I.F.
27.976"

Middle row, left to right:
"NX 118238
TPR.
F.W.DUNN
2nd A.I.F.
18.12.00"

"132082
L.A.C.
A.WAUGH
R.A.A.F.
14.12.00"

"SSX26117 $ 34305
LSM
A.MUIR
R.N & R.A.N
14.4.00"

Bottom row, left to right:
"665
S/SGT
A.A.CUNYNGHAME
1. DIV. HO.
1. A.I.F.
9.7.76"

"15004
CPL
C.H.MITCHELL
R.A.A.F
12.8.76"

"109
PTE
L.W.ROBEY
44.BTN.
1 A.I.F
10.9.76"

"QX8188
PTE
E.W.McDERMOTT
2/15. BTN.
2. A.I.F
20.10.76"


(Embiggen)

Top row, left to right:
"C823
PTE.
E.E. SMITH
14. BATN. 1.A.I.F
7.8.62"

"STD
E.W.HAWKINS
MERCHANT NAVY
10.8.66"

"NX29545
SGT
T.O'HANLON
4.ARM.BGDE.CO.
2. A.I.F
20.11.68"

"501
TPR
C.P.SWENY
7. L/HORSE
1. A.I.F
12.5.70"

"QX20972
SPR
R.T. AMOS
2/24. F/PARK CO
R.A. 2. A.I.F
17.7.70"

"4630
PTE
R.A.COL[D?]
3.BATN. 1 A.[I.F]
31.7.??"

Middle row, left to right:
"24344
P.O.
R.G.QUIN
R.A.N.
25.8.95"

"S 4420
AB.
C.W.N.DAVIS
R.A.N.R
25.5.96"

"SEAMAN
O.D.AYLING
MERCHANT NAVY
24.7.97"

"2-770370
L/CPL.
G.E.WRIGHT
A.M.F.
18.11.98"

"NX 96690
A.J.LEE
2nd A.I.F
17.8.97"

Bottom row, left to right:
"10090
PTE.
C.E.WOOLFORD
15. F/AMB.
1 A.I.F
13.11.29"

"3120
PTE
E.A.RICHARDSON
M.M
33.BATN. 1.A.I.F
25.9.68"

"NX23442
PTE
L.A.NEWMAN
2.5. A.G.H
21_11_69"

"7738
PTE
J.W.WILSON
15.BATN. 1. A.I.F
24.6.70"

"NX193827
PTE
F.S.BAILEY
6.R.STORES DPT
2. A.I.F
18.7.70"

"49901
DVR
G.W.ANGEL--
R.F.A.--
4_10_ --"



(Embiggen)

Top row, left to right:
"NX121060
S. GreenHalgh
2.A.I.F
15.6.63"

"NX90584
PTE
A. Lowe
PARA. BTN.
2.A.I.F.
13.11.73"

"20047
PTE
K.E.McELHINNEY
4. F/AMB.
22.3.75"

"23799
A.B
R.M.COLE
R.A.N
15.5.76"

"NX122263
MAJOR
G.F.FINL--
A.I.F. VET--
2. A.I.[F.]
3.4. []"

Middle row, left to right:
"[]
[?] M.TAYLOR
[R].A.N.
[]0.10.99"

"421538
F/O
T.N.JONES
R.A.A.F.
26.4.99"

"NX [1]7019[?]
2nd A.I.F.
2.11.99"

"NX 151862
PTE.
F.R.REEVES
2nd A.I.F.
21.1.99"

"NX 67219
SAPPER
F.K.RUSSELL
2nd A.I.F.
4.7.95"

Bottom row, left to right:
"NX55780
GNR
L.G.COOKE
2/6. F/REG.
2.A.I.F.
14.6.73"
3402
PTE
D.E.McCROW
2. BTN.
1.A.I.F.
12.11.75"

"NX53172
PTE
R.D.ROBERTS
273SUPPLY DEPOT
2. A.I.F.
11.5.76"

"558718
SPR
S.H.PATSTON
SPL.SIG. CO.
R.E
28.3.76"

6868
CPL
H.E.THOMAS
13.BTN.
1.A.I.F.
26.4.7[6?]"


"2.A.I.F." appears to mean 2nd AIF, and "1.A.I.F." to mean 1st AIF. AIF means Australian Imperial Force.
"The Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was the name given to two all-volunteer Australian Army forces dispatched to fight overseas during World War I and World War II.

* First Australian Imperial Force (1914-18)
* Second Australian Imperial Force (1939-45)

Following the Federation of Australia in 1901, Australia had a very small regular army and reservists in the Australian Citizens Military Forces which could not be deployed overseas. Therefore the AIFs were formed in 1914 and 1939 respectively." Wiki

And while we're here, let's not be forgetting the Turks lost more boys at Anzac Cove than us and the Kiwis put together and along with whitefellas there was Aboriginal ANZACs in the firing line as well.

Lest we forget

Gnostics

Lovely gloomy day today. The sun's barely had a look in and it's been raining on and off. It's nice and chilly. I've been prancing about in the bedspread worn as a cape, tracky daks and uggs. I did not go walkies in this outfit. The rain would've wrecked my uggs. In fact I did not go walkies at all and instead bring you more of Bustling Downtown Woy Woy.



Gnostic Forest & Cafe, The Boulevard.

Not sure of the age of this building. Can't find it at the photos site the library put up. Had a sticky round the back though and it's about the same age as the wee warehouse or whatever the bottom photo used to be.

That's the Old Woy Woy Pub on the left edge of the picture. The old factory is opposite this corner.



Craft's Chambers Chambers Place.

This place is some sort of health centre. Can't tell how old it is. It's had a reno, maybe when it was extended in 2003 but the shape of its front half suggests it's older than that.

Love that wee balcony with the vine slowly engulfing it. The building behind is the back of the pub or the bottle shop, the bizzo under the vine on the left on the picture is the cafe's courtyard (nice sunny niche on an autumn morning) and the footy oval is just out of frame on the right.



Gnostic Organics Chambers Place. I've had a decko at the back of this place and on the grounds of that decko I'm putting it down as circa 1920 and of no particular style.

A fruit & veg shop. Directly opposite Craft's Chambers, next to an op shop (right) and that's the back of Noonan's in the left background.



Click on the map for the annotated version.

All the Bustling Downtown Woy Woy photos


Ghost ship

How cool is that deserted yacht mystery? Probably not all that cool for the three blokes missing from it but it's a regular Marie Celeste and makes three. Maybe the water spout got them.


P.S.

Wednesday's post will be on Thursday and I intend to spend Wednesday playing two-up and getting legless.

Snakes alive!

Good thing I was too slack-arsed to go walkies this morning. Woulda missed the beasties on show at the local shopping centre.


(Embiggification)

Isn't he beautiful? He was getting a bit irritable by this time but couldn't bite anyone with the wrangler person's hand round his head.

He's a baby freshwater crocodile, a freshie. Proper name Crocodylus johnstoni.

Freshies live in northern Australia (Woy Woy is in south-eastern Australia), lay eggs and live at least as long as humans, grow to the length of a basketball player and weigh as much as a sulky teenager. They eat insects, fish, frogs, lizards, turtles, bats, birds and incautious tourists.

Photos & science-y stuff & how to be croc wise in croc country.


Embiggification, sharp enough to see the pattern)

Carpet snake, also known as the Diamond python. Proper name Morelia spilota. Mainly goes out at night, eats small beasts after squeezing them to death, painful bite, lives in coastal New South Wales so is a local, gets to 2 or 3 metres (6.5 - 9 feet).

Reptiles of NSW Wetlands - Dept. of Natural Resources.


(Embiggification, blurry)

Didn't hear over if this fella was a turtle or a tortoise. You can see most of his neck there I think. It was long and snakelike.


(Embiggification, fuzzy but servicable)

The only way is up, baby! He was beautiful. He felt soft and warm and smooth. (Make your own dick jokes.)

Spotted Python, proper name Liasis maculosis. Lays eggs, doesn't bite, goes out at night, eats small beasts & birds, average length as long as yer arm, lives from Cape York Peninsula to far northern NSW.

Fauna Rescue of Queensland - bit of science stuff & a photo.
Queensland Museum has a cool photo.
Snake buying advice

Did you know herpes is named after snakes? Neither did I but it's right there in the Oxford. The Greek for reptiles is herpeton and snake-fanciers are called herpetologists.

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.

Lemonpeel Cottage

(Wagstaffe walkies #2)



Wagstaffe Hall Mulhall Street Wagstaffe. The local community hall, as evidenced by the community look about the place and the notices in the windows on the right.

The style could be Federation (circa 1890 - c. 1915) but I doubt if the building is. Didn't find a date on it and can't find a date for it online. Going on what I can see of the population growth in Wagstaffe, I'd guesstimate it at Inter War (circa 1915 - c. 1940), bearing in mind that community buildings often have retro designs where local residents are startled by more up-to-the-minute stuff.

Brett and Sarah were married there last year and say it has "polished floor boards and white french doors that open onto a verandah, which overlooks the water". There's a nice bit of lawn out there off the veranda, right next to the ferry wharf. The Killcare Wagstaffe Trust meet there apparently and the Bouddi Society shows flicks there and there's tai chi and you can hire it for functions and all the usual community stuff.

There was a young kookaburra sitting in the pine tree (right edge of photo) having a mid-morning chuckle. The kookas have been very active lately, much more than this time last year.

All today's photos are within cooee of each other and the wharf. Wagstaffe's not a big place. It's got five streets.



Rather pleasant. A holiday rental right next to Wagstaffe Wharf and this dingy photo.



Lemonpeel Cottage gate Wagstaff Avenue Wagstaffe. My favourite house name of all the house names I've seen so far. Most of those I've seen so far are along the lines of Didjabringabeer, Ruo Emoh, Dave's Shack and Thistle Do.



Wagstaff Avenue. Might be 1900s (Federation) might not. Probably is. Ditto the place on the right. That was even nicer but had, from a photography point of view, a badly placed bush.

You can see how close the bush is. Birds could be heard whistling and the kookaburras laughing and a couple of cockatoos flapped among the trees. Over that rise is Lobster Beach and the mouth of Broken Bay leading out to the Tasman Sea.



Smart-looking Inter-War California Bungalow (circa 1915 - c. 1940) on Wagstaff Avenue, one block back from the water. Love the contrasts of the white and greens and purple and blue. Today was a great day for photos.

Bloody hell, it's dinnertime already. I've been fart-arsing about on the computer all afternoon. See yer Wednesday.

Play Misty for me

Went off at six this morning on my walkies. Dawn wander around the local streets sans camera. It was lovely. It was nice and nippy, perfect tracky daks weather and my nose tingled in the cold for the first few minutes. The light of an overcast dawn was soft grey and the kookaburras were starting their morning chuckles. If I wasn't such a lazy bed-loving bugger I'd do more autumn dawn walkies.

The sky was overcast most of the morning but I got some more blue-sky photos from Davistown:



Misty. Never in all my walkies at and ferry trips to Davistown have I seen anyone on this boat. I suspect it's someone's holiday cottage. She's moored off Paringa Avenue and Illoura Reserve.



Restella Avenue. The style of this place I'm going to put down as Fishing Shack (circa 1900 - c. 1940). The left hand part of the house, the roof with the 1980s Federation bits on it, is an old fishing shack/holiday house/starter home I think.

Then there's been a few add-ons since then. If we look closely at the middle section of the house we can see what looks like a second veranda roof behind the bullnosed (curved) veranda roof. See it? Then behind that a two-storey roofline. The two-storey roofline suggests to me a second storey was added onto the back of the first add-on. I don't think that is a second veranda but a single-storey add-on.

Looking at the width of the weatherboard on the walls, I'd say the weatherboard went on in the 1970s with the two-storey add-on. The carport looks seventies as well. Then the bullnose veranda either in the 1980s when the Federation bits went on and then the angled two-storey roof at the right in the last few years.

The garden I'm putting down as mainly seventies and eighties with most of it, including the palms, going in in the seventies.


(Biggify)

Paringa Avenue. This one isn't on my hist list but I'm bunging it in Federation (circa 1890 - c. 1915). It looked the right age in the flesh, the chimney fits well enough, the flattened X pattern of the veranda railings fits and the general shape fits, in an Arts & Crafts way.

The leadlight door is rather pleasant. The light was in just the right part of the sky to catch it. I think it might be genuine. I'm no expert on leadlight but it doesn't look like one of those 1980s-90s repro jobs. Those ripply panels look too real. I'll put ten bucks on it being Art Deco. Which either puts the house at the end of the Federation period and into the beginning of the Inter War period, or puts the door added on later.



It's nice and sunny and warm again this afternoon. I'm off to the balcony.

Leonora Avenue

(Davistown walkies #4)



Low tide, slouching photographer. Nice place to sit for a bit though. Davistown foreshore at Leonora Avenue, looking west-north-west to Saratoga's Mount Pleasant.

Lovely warm sun today. Blue sky, not much breeze. Wandered about gazing at other people's gardens for a bit then sat under the trees on the foreshore having a bit of a doze. Very pleasant.



"ERNA ANGELS KINNS
'NAN'

Yes'sirree!

Sit awhile and rest your feet
Enjoy the scenery from this seat
For where you are now I loved to be
By the water beneath this tree"

Thanks, Nan. Much appreciated.

There's another memorial seat at Umina Beach. Bob Da Silva's.



Leonora Avenue house seen from Nan Kinns seat on the foreshore. There's 4 houses in Leonora Avenue listed in my hist list as "'Emoh Ruo' et al. ...6-12 Leonora Avenue Davistown ... c.1915, 1920".

I love these houses with the closed-in verandas. They're the business in a waterfront situation. This one's not in the best nick though. Looks orright in the photo but in the flesh it could do with a bit of work.



I like this park. The fact that you can see right across it to the boats on the other side appeals to the kid in me. It's on the knob of Davistown, the bit of the foreshore/Illoura Walk at the elbow of Malinya Avenue.



Lintern Wharf and Rileys Island from Davistown foreshore, Daleys Point in the middle background and the two wee hills of Yattalunga in the left background.


Bonus question, or answer, or whatever

Found this:


(Embiggen)

Nice big picture of the Codock II AKA the Cockatoo ferry leaving Woy Woy Wharf. (Previous post on her)


Okay. I'm off to have a nice lump of carrot cake and a cuppa tea on the balcony. Is autumn the best or what?

Happy Chocolate Day

Easter Bilby

Bilbies are small bandicoots about the size of rabbits. They have long pointy bandicoot noses and big rabbitty ears. For the biologists among you, they are Macrotis lagotis (Greater Bilby) and Macrotis leucura (Lesser Bilby). The word bilby comes from the Yuwaalaraay and Wiradjuri languages of NSW.

They live in the bush in hot dry areas and in wattle groves. They come out at night and eat pretty much whatever they can get their tiny hands on. They live in burrows and carry their young in pouches like kangaroos. The bilby's pouch faces backwards though, to stop it filling up with sand when they dig. (More)

Bilbies are an endangered species. The Easter Bilby is flogged in supermarkets and by Darrell Lea to raise money for bilby rescue. They're endangered mainly because of foxes, feral cats and those bloody rabbits.

Pictures & movies of the Greater Bilby
Fauna (animals) of Australia


What's with the eggs?

So what the fuck does rabbits and eggs have to do with some guy waking up in a cave after he got nailed to a cross?

Long ago and far away (from Australia anyways), in pre-christian times, religious celebrations revolved around the seasons.

In the darkest days of winter (Yule) the last of the preserved fruits and the vegies that weren't quite rotten were eaten up in a big feast to celebrate the spring to come, harvest time (Hallowe'en) was celebrated with corn and pumpkins, summer with dancing about in the sun and getting pissed on the grape crop and spring (Easter) was celebrated with symbols of rebirth and renewal like bunnies which breed a lot in spring and eggs, which are delicious and also symbolic of new life and stuff.

So Easter basically means 'the sun is back and so is the fresh food'. In the northern hemisphere, where the majority of Australia's culture comes from, Easter is in spring. We have it in autumn because it's autumn here when it's spring in the northern hemisphere.

So happy Easter, peeps.

Bustling Downtown Woy Woy

Some photos I've been meaning to post for a while. Bustling Downtown Woy Woy stuff. The three by two block area around the railway station that is Woy Woy's central business district.



Blackwall Road, opposite Woolies (Woolworths), near the Library and next to the wee brick church.

The Talk of the Town/Optometrist/Florist building is all the same brick and has 1940s windows on the top left hand side. The seventies windows and the white brick on the top right hand side I'm guessing enclose a nice sunny veranda that served the flat upstairs when it was a flat upstairs and not an office as it probably is now.

The Tonkin Drysdale Partners building there on the left is pure seventies. Hideous. If I remember right the back is pure seventies as well so either the land was vacant or they pulled something down to build that.

Out of frame on the left is a small arcade-y type building with a shoe shop and some offices upstairs. On the right edge of the photo you can see a bit of the Westpac bank.



Chambers Real Estate Blackwall Road Woy Woy. Opposite the Library and Oval Avenue, next to the travel agent (out of frame right) and Checka's bakery (Colonial Village Bakery, out of frame left). Chambers is also the name of the street Oval Avenue joins up with.

I like this one. Inter-War Functionalist (circa 1915 - c. 1940) is what I'm thinking. There's not much to go on but those stripes in the brickwork say Inter-War Functionalist to me.



Clocktower Building Railway Street Woy Woy. Not my cup of tea at all. Well, okay, I like clock towers just not the building holding this one up. Too bloody eighties and I'm hating the proportions at the bottom. The bloody thing looks like it's teetering on its toes.

Having thoroughly dissed it I have to admit its footbridge (the overhead bit to the right) is bloody useful when one is headed across to Deepwater (Deepwater Plaza) in hot or rainy weather.

See that graffitti on the tower? Bloody taggers get into the engine room (or whatever the techo word is) on their way to tagging the tower and they interfere with the clock mecahanism. It's pretty good now but a couple of years back locals would be tapping tourists who'd just looked at the clock on the shoulder and warning them it said a different time on each face.

Those looking from the train can see the Clocktower easily and see where the footbridge continues out the back of the building and across to the carpark.



A little row of shops directly opposite the railway station in Railway Street. The fish-measurers used to have their fish-n-chip shop where Mortgage Choice is now. The veranda and balcony on Mortgage Choice and the dentist is not old. It went up last year or the year before. I find it quite pleasing to the eye and excellent shade on a hot summer day.

The shop under the number 18 used to hold some place selling glitter and flounces, possibly for ballet. I think it moved to Gosford. What the red shop held is on the tip of my tongue (or the tip of my fingers since I'm typing). Might've been a plonk shop (wine shop) but don't quote me on that.

Note the bike shop. They moved to this shop after a fire in their previous shop 50 metres to the left of this photo.

For now I'm putting the style of this wee row of shops down as Inter-War Free Classical (circa 1915 - c. 1940) due to the symmetry and the age of the materials. Keen-eyed readers will have noticed the old bricks down the side if the building (right hand edge of photo) and noticed that althought the beige section appears fairly young you can see from the age of the side and the shape of the facade at the top that's it's just been fiddled. In fact, it was fiddled with last year, as you can see in the Railway Street photo.


Tsunami fails to demolish Woy Woy

Yesterday there was a tsunami warning from Far North Queensland to Sydney. In Queensland they scarpered into the hills, in Sydney the life guards herded bewildered tourists off Bondi and in Woy Woy I was probably scratching my groin about the time it hit Umina Beach.

In short, it was a no-show. In Australia anyways. It ripped the shit out of the Solomons. Poor bastards, as if they didn't have enough trouble with all that civil unrest shit.

Sleepy

(Pictures)

I am not a happy wombat. It's a warm fresh autumn day and I just want to sleep.

Finished a thingy of work yesterday. A numbered list of 327 things wrong with someone's precious thesis. This is not job I recommend to the faint-hearted as it often involves dealing with the woolly-minded and the long-winded.

I don't do academic ghostwriting. That's a different kettle of fish and a naughty one. I do editing. I read through the thesis (or article for publishing or whatever) and email them stuff like 'Section 30, paragraphs 4-17: Extraneous' and 'Suggest re-think of theory behind Sections 57 & 108'. Then they open the email, read the list, feel faint, have a little cry and perhaps work on some of my suggestions.

The main qualifications for the job are an ability to detect bullshit disguised as theory, the ability to say 'that's very interesting but it won't get you a pass mark and I'm not doing it after March the 15th', and the ability to resist the larger fees for doing actual ghostwriting, even when said fees include headjobs.

(Yer bog standard, non-academic ghostwriting is perfectly legit. Some poor hack is forced to listen to an inarticulate sports star or other celeb then put together an "autobiography" of that person. The ghostwriter does the work but the author on the cover is the celeb. The other common use of ghostwriting to reproduce the writing style and substance of a bestselling but now deceased author.)

Anyways, I did this job and I did it well and it was a Bad Thing. I took the bigger fee for doing a rush job and I worked on it long and hard. Which is how I got sick in the first place. That and injudicious applications of beer and pizza.

I'm pissed off. I slipped back into old habits after I promised myself I wouldn't. I've barely had time to scratch my arse for weeks, it's taken a month to read my blog list and anyone who rings me does so at their peril.

On a chirpier note, it's a beautiful day, I can have a snooze on my balcony once I've posted this and I've got some more sunny Saratoga photos:



Willaroo Road comes of Steyne Road and down to the sailing club. On the right as it levels out there's Saratoga Oval and on the left there's the tennis club and the Saratoga Wetland. The oval has a cricket pitch on it and a couple of climbing thingies for kids at the water's edge. It's a quiet spot to sit and enjoy the warm autumn sun and the quiet sound of the waves among the mangroves.

Sitting there at the water's edge Mount Pleasant, the hill of Saratoga, is behind you. Ahead is Koolewong with its aerial. To your right you can see along to western shore of Brisbane Water up to Gosford. Then the bulk of Green Point sitting at the water end of Kincumba Mountain blocks your view of East Gosford. (Map)


(Embiggen)

A slow muddy stream through the Wetland and ducks silently floating. The houses are on Steyne Road and the hill is Mount Pleasant. The walkway through the Wetland goes from behind the tennis courts on Willaroo Road to the end of Marian Street. For most of the walkway you can see only the mangroves and the top of Mount Pleasant and Blackwall Mountain over at Woy Woy. There's a lot of walks like that around Brisbane Water. I love it.


(Embiggen)

A pleasant house on Henderson Road. I particularly like how it's overcome its seventies origins with a nice not-seventies colour scheme and a not-seventies veranda. And the garden smelt good.


(Embiggen)

This photo captures the sleepy mood I'm in. Warm sun, quiet, gentle rhythm of the water lapping and little else. In more practical terms we're looking at the back half of Pelican Island on the left, Waterfall Bay behind it across the railway line and Koolewong in the middle.


(Embiggen)

The tide was low-ish and the seaweed floated near the surface. There was nary an uneaten rock oyster to be had (as usual). There were a few dozen tiny brown fish, like whitebait only brown. Over at Woy Woy Wharf and hour earlier whitebait had been moving about in the green water around the piers.


That's yer lot for today and I'm off out to my balcony with a quilt and a cuppa tea.

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.