Yattalunga

(Yattalunga walkies #1, Map)



Rush hour at Centennial Avenue foreshore, Saratoga.

Someone was taking their dog for a swim, several giggly teenagers on an inflatable raft were being towed very slowly through the shallows, a few speedboat droned slowly from Gosford to Woy Woy.




Looking across from Centennial Avenue Saratoga to Tascott.

Plenty of nice views to be had today but the bastard light was dodgy as hell for photos.




Steyne Road Saratoga (middle distance) and Tascott from Centennial Avenue Saratoga.

Hung around for a bit hoping the light would improve then set off down a side street, along a public access path and over the hill into Yattalunga.




Yattalunga Tidal Pool. That's it at the end of the jetty, that bit of water surrounded by a fence. There was a happy family out there with their fishing rods and the kid in a life jacket. I glared at them moodily and stamped off again to enjoy my misery. I was already hot and cross and I'd only been walking ten minutes.




Knotty bits on some sort of strangle vine taking over a gum on the foreshore.




Mangrove root bleaching in the sun in front of a wee grove of mangroves near the tidal pool.




Decaying house Mundoora Avenue Yattalunga. Big empty backyard behind this one. Some developer person will snap it up and there'll be a dozen aggressively modern units on it before you can say demolition order. Though it's true the house may fall down of its own accord before then.




A tinny and Brisbane Water right across from yer front door. You wouldn't be dead fer quids.




The red circled bit is Yattalunga. Right above Saratoga and Davistown.


Feeling bloody sorry for myself today. Up half the night talking to God on the big white phone then a hot sweaty walk with the light coming and going like a punter on a 5 minute voucher. Dragged myself out of bed at morning tea time, tottered onto the ferry and stamped along my walkies route muttering about how hard done by I was and how evil the light was for coming out then going back on the second the camera was fired up. Back at home now with me feet in a nice cool foot bath and the delightful prospect of no work tomorrow followed by the Australia Day long weekend.


Our Heath


Our Heath & Doe Eyes in Brokeback Mountain

Shit. That was out of the blue. Hope the family unplugs their telly for a month and pays no attention to the wild speculation and general bollocks that follows a celebrity death. My sympathies to them.

Sydney Morning Herald articles, photo links & obituary

King tide

(Davistown walkies)

High tide this morning was bloody high. It's full moon and and the tide had swallowed all the wee beaches round the estuary and submerged half the private jetties and dozens of dingies.

The public jetties are made of sterner stuff but the Dear Old Things and I needed sherpas to get up the steep slope of the gangplank onto the Saratoga. They were off to the Davo for a steak sanger and a shandy and I was off to finish off the last few streets of Davistown.




King tide creek Lillipilli Street Davistown. Edge of the wetland beside the road under water.

Lillipilli is a native plant, "a bush" says the Dear Old Thing downstairs, "excellent for hedges". There's some good close-ups of lillipilli flowers and inhabitants here.



Wetland between Lillipilli Street and Murna Road. Looking down through the shallow water I could see the cracked earth of the drought years slowly swelling with moisture and little water critters playing about.

The wetlands are "Swamp Sclerophyll Forest", as I rabbitted on about a while back when I did Cockle Bay Wetland. This swamp is not far from Cockle Bay, a bare 200 metres.




Tidal Waters villas on a canal, end of Davis Avenue Davistown.

If you'd asked me what I expected to find lurking at the end of an ordinary-looking street in Davistown I would not have said a canal, but a canal there was. It led out past the Davo and into Kincumber Broadwater. The villas each had their own little stone steps leading down to a miniscule landing and a nice ring to tie their dingy up. It looked rather fun.




Canal running beside Murna Road Davistown. The canal leading off the Davis Avenue canal and out past the Davo and into Kincumber Broadwater. You can't see it from Murna Road unless you poke your head through the trees beside the road.




Davistown Store c.1920 McCauley Street Davistown

Not sure what this building does now. Seems to be some sort of office out the back and the front seems uninhabited.

Circa 1920 says my hist list, and it looks it. Nice inter-war bungalow. Right next to the public wharf too so handy for the boating trade in its days as a shop.

Lovely cool east wind again today. Yesterday I sat on the balcony for hours just watching it gusting in the old gum next door. Over at Davistown I sat today on the foreshore and listened to it roar soft and cool through the needle-leaf pines and the water slap and splash against the tied-up boats.




Updated my walkies progress map at last.

Saratoga and Davistown are at 1 o'clock and 2 o'clock from Woy Woy.

Walkies finished marked in solid orange. Walkies unfinished marked in orange stripes.


Still got a bit to go of Saratoga and Hardys Bay etc. Gosford I've done a bit of but not much. Bradys Gully cemetery was a North Gosford walk.


Walks I have finished since I started

The Peninsula: Woy Woy, Blackwall, Umina, Ettalong, Booker Bay, Pearl Beach & Patonga
Correa, Horsfield, Phegans & Woy Woy Bays
Parks Bay
Koolewong/Murphys Bay
Tascott
Point Clare
Longnose (Point Frederick)
Davistown
Empire Bay
St Huberts Island
Daleys Point
Fishermans Bay
Wagstaffe

Walks I've done bits of since I started

Kincumber
West Gosford (might've finished this but can't be buggered looking it up)
East Gosford & Springfield
Gosford
Hardys Bay
Pretty Beach

(There's a better list somewhere in my archives. If anyone's got the URL for it, pop it in the comments there's a dear, I've spent half an hour looking for the bastard.)

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.

Back

How was your Chrissy?

Mine was bloody nice. Spent most of it laying about in the altogether at a mate's place in Tumbi. Lovely spot out the back. Nice flat paddock going down into a valley and a capacious beer fridge on the veranda. What more could a person want in a mate?




Derelict old cottage squeezed in between the railway and the road on Brisbane Water Drive at Murphys Bay (Koolewong), just opposite Sheathers. It might've been there before the railway.

It's gone now. Demolished recently.




Gone now. Demolished recently. Ten bucks says there's a dozen villas on there before you can say development approval.

Gone




The UFO AKA St John's Blackwall Road Woy Woy. Rumour has it late arrivals to services are locked out and have to buzz to be let in. Seems a bizarre way of dealing with worshippers in these times of shrinking congregations.

Rumour also has it this church is a Pope-lure. Il Papa is visiting this wide brown land later this year and is holding some sort of shindig at Randwick Racecourse. Gosford's racegoers have successfully had him banned from their racecourse.




Old St John's Blackwall Road Woy Woy. It's a bastard to photograph due to being on a busy intersection.

The large building is the old 1914 St John's church. To the right of it are the villas built about a year ago. They are in a very sympathetic style, using an almost identical brick colour and even have flat arches (bricks arranged vertically on across the top of the windows).

They replaced the eccentric collection of old school buildings and sheds that were on the church grounds.




Yacht moored off Ettalong Beach on a warm day. Looking out between Wagstaffe (left) and the knob of Ettalong (right) to Lion Island (behind yacht), Barrenjoey Head and Pittwater. Taken a dozen yards from the house above.




Ocean View Road Ettalong. Lovely old place with a large tangled backyard. From the veranda it's perhaps 50 steps to the water. I am suffering terribly from envy.




Messing about in boats at Ettalong Beach. Looking out between Wagstaffe (left) and the knob of Ettalong (right) to Lion Island, Barrenjoey Head and Pittwater. Taken a dozen yards from the house above.


Odds and sods

Lisa and Derrick's Wobbly Pole House at Umina


Jack Randall's email wants to know "how did you find out all that infomation also where all the heratage houses are." I take photos on my walkies and look them up in architecture books, online and in old local photos. I'm just another keen amateur.


The comments on Palm Beach again are a rich seam of local info, including more support for wooden boats, a Freo connection, a flash flooding report and news of "a gateway to the fabled lost Egyptian civilisation at Kariong". Thank yer and a belated Merry Hogswatch to all who participated.

On other posts Woy Woy Steve reveals himself as a fellow map geek and Greg avails himself of Dr Spike's Woy Wegian Family History & Ferry Tours Service.


And Dr Annona Pearse of the Uni of Newcastle wants you.

She's after info on and photos of the old Ocean Beach Aquarium. "The Aquarium, owned by the late Eric Worrell, operated in the late 1940s and early 1950s on the corner of West and Augusta Streets Umina ... Many Peninsula residents may have memories of visiting the aquarium or supplying Eric Worrell with funnel web spiders for his early work in the supply of venom."

Read the rest of the article at the local rag or ring Dr Pearse on (02) 4382 6514.

Palm Beach again

(Palm Beach again)



Our trusty steed Fantasea Crystal at Ettalong Wharf. She is a 25 metre aluminium catamaran and takes a max of 192 passengers.




Lion Island, looking south from the Palm Beach ferry. Notice the cliff at the head end, facing out therough the heads of Broken Bay, and the lion-ish shape of the whole thing.




Lion Island from the Palm Beach ferry.




Head on of Lion Island. Rock climbers can occasionally be spotted inching their way up its face.

The island is on a couple of my old maps as Elliott Island, named in 1789 by Governor Phillip after another Island where his mate General Elliott gave the Spanish and French a kicking. It's 8 hectares and was made into Lion Island Nature Reserve in 1956. There's quite a few beasties living on it, mostly birds though of course.

White-bellied Sea-Eagle
Osprey
Kookaburra
Grey Teal
Fork-tailed Swift
White-throated Needletail
Pied Currawong
Australian Raven
Mistletoe bird
Nankeen Kestrel
Peregrine Falcon
Silver Gull
Crested Tern
Yellow-faced Honeyeater
White-cheeked Honeyeater
Great Cormorant
Little Pied Cormorant
Little Black Cormorant
Tawny Frogmouth
Blue Petrel
Fluttering Shearwater
Sooty Shearwater
Wedge-tailed Shearwater
Short-tailed Shearwater
Eastern Rosella
Little Penguin
Southern Boobook
Silvereye

Water-rat
House mouse

Eastern Water Dragon
Robust Ctenotus
Copper-tailed Skink
Eastern Water-skink
Three-toed Skink
Lace Monitor

Proper names at NSW National Parks

Sydney Climbing



Embiggen

Barrenjoey Head from Pittwater. Note the flat strip of land on the right hand side of the Head. That's the golf course, with Palm Beach itself on the other side of it and Barrenjoey Beach on the Pittwater side, which is this side.




Myra leaving Palm Beach wharf. She does the bays and wharves of Pittwater. She's too small to go across the mouth of Broken Bay to Ettalong. She'd be all over the place in a decent swell.

She is a 15 metre woodern ferry and "the pride of Palm Beach Ferry Service". She takes a max of 130 passengers.

Sister ship Crystal Spirit at Wagstaffe wharf

Palm Beach ferry fleet

Ettalong to Palm Beach map

More Broken ferries & boats

Islands of Broken Bay


And that's yer lot for the year. I'm on me holidays now and will be laying on the beach and having barbies for a couple of weeks, storms permitting. Have a good Chrissy and come back on the 15th of January.

Palm Beach

Coupla days of blue sky sandwiched between storms so I shot out with the camera while the light was good. Felt like a ferry ride so I dragged a couple of mates over to Palm Beach.




Crystal Spirit coming in to Palm Beach wharf in Pittwater. Just over that hill is the Pacific Ocean.

Palm Beach is near the top of a narrow peninsula known unofficially as the Insular Peninsula. Money lives there and visiting movie stars often hang out there. It looks onto the Pacific Ocean on its east side and onto Pittwater on its western side. Pittwater is the southern arm of Broken Bay, the Hawkesbury River is the western arm and Brisbane Water (where Woy Woy is) is the northern arm. Map.




Looking south down Pittwater from Barrenjoey Road. In the background across the water is Ku-ring-gai National Park.




Looking north to Lion Island & Woy Woy Peninsula from Waratah Road. The Pacific was a bit rough but Pittwater was lovely and calm. Here we're looking from Pittwater, across the mouth of Broken Bay, to the mouth of Brisbane Water, just beyond Lion Island. That faint bit of beach you can see just to the left of Lion Island is Pearl Beach. If I hadn't deliberately excluded the bastard, you'd be able to see the fungoid blob of the Excrescence at Ettalong.




Looking north from Palm Beach to Barrenjoey Head & the Bouddi Peninsula. The closer hill with the lighthouse on it is Barrenjoey Head. The further land is Gerrin Point or thereabouts.

As we stood there gawking a Hercules or summat cruised silent and low up the beach and turned inland at Barrenjoey Head. We couldn't hear it over the surf and it probably couldn't hear us strike up a chorus of It's raining men in the vain hope it would drop sexy paratroopers.



Pacific Ocean from the corner of Palm Beach Road & Sunrise Place. That's a cargo ship there on the horizon, waiting to come into Sydney Harbour.




Woy Woy to Palm Beach by ferry. Note ferry pilot not plastered by avoiding sandbars.

Back to top


A wee bit of seasonal humour

When four of Santa's elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones, Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.

At this time, Mrs. Claus thought it appropriate to tell Santa that her Mum was coming to visit, this stressed Santa even more.

When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, who knows where. This stressed poor Santa even more.

Then when he began to load the sleigh one of the boards cracked, and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys.

So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hidden the liquor, and there was nothing to drink. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider pot, and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw end of the broom.

Just then the doorbell rang, and irritable Santa trudged to the door. He opened the door, and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said, very cheerfully, "Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn't it a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?"

And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

Ye Olde Woy Woy

Annotated & embiggened versions

Woy Woy's first railway station. It was just opposite where the Railway Street/Charlton Street roundabout is now.

George Fletcher, who wrote for the Gosford Times under the name Perong, wrote in 1928 that the station master delivered the post by emptying the mail bag out onto a bench and reading out the names on the envelopes.



Annotated & embiggened versions

Woy Woy's first railway station with train pulled in (middle), the beautiful old Bay View Hotel (the original one, right) and a bit more of Woy Woy on the left edge, prior to 1910.

The water is Woy Woy Inlet. The current railway station is about where that long jetty is.



Annotated & embiggened versions

The Boulevard Woy Woy early 1900's. Looking north-north-west round the curve of The Boulevard towards the railway and the hill of Parks Bay/Koolewong across Woy Woy Inlet.

The pub on the left is still there, minus it's upper veranda. The buildings of the right hand side of the road have been replaced by other shops, a factory-now-motel and the 1929 Bay View pub.

The amount of people you can see on The Boulevard in this picture (a dozen) is not much changed.



Annotated & embiggened versions

The Boulevard Woy Woy early 1900s. Looking from what is now the Bay View pub corner north-north-east along The Boulevard (then called main Street).

The distant hill visible behind the trees is Saratoga/Davistown.

On the right hand edge of the photo is "Gilan's Woy Woy" which looks like a shop of some kind. To its immediate left is the old Post Office, built in 1906 to house the post when Postmistress Minard Crommelin came in 1906.

On the left hand side of the picture is another shop with "COX" and some unreadable words on its awning, then another smaller shop, then a butcher. The open ground next to the butcher is where the fish and chip shop and the Woy Woy Memorial Park (Soldiers' Park) are now. Huck Finn's, which was once a butcher shop, is still standing in about the same spot as this butcher shop.

The second Bay View Hotel is not yet built but its site is just out of frame on the left bottom. The camera is standing on the corner of The Boulevard and Brisbane Water Drive.



Annotated & embiggened versions

Bustling Downtown Woy Woy


Linkage

Thanks to Michael for the links.

Railpage - trainspotter talk.

Steam train to Gosford & OSCAR trials - YouTube, shot at Tascott & Hawkesbury River/Brooklyn.

Golden knobs

(Random walkies)

Bloody light's still no bloody good for photos and I'm still working my arse off. Dug these up from the archives.




Very weird banksia cobs seen in Picnic Parade Ettalong last month.

They look deformed. Lovely golden colour though.




Normal cone. Not the very same variety of Banksia but close enough.




The deformed ones again. The brown one is the seed cob. It's got some knobs and some normal pods on it.

This afternoon storms every day thing has been going on for a couple of weeks now. But it can't last forever. Will be enough light for photos again soon.


8 4 random things about me

Got tagged by Device dear.

1. Somewhere around the 12th drink I talk like a chipmunk for 10 minutes then pop outside for a spew and a little lie down.

2. I like aeroplane jelly.

3. But not vegemite. Yeah, I know, I have to give my Stralyan Card back now.

4. I have a mole in a conversation-halting place.

Lightning & overtime

Lightning

Some poor tourist copped it up at Terrigal the other night. Struck by lightning. Terrigal's 20 minutes up the road from here. Popular tourist spot, what with the lagoon and the beach. Anyways, it was storms and strikes galore, as it has been all week, and not the ideal time for fishing.

The Herald says she was "standing in ankle-deep water watching her boyfriend fish" and News.com.au says she was "walking between her boyfriend and a friend, who were holding fishing rods". They're both sure she was at Terrigal Beach.

Cool lightning photos


Overtime

Had to pop into the supermarket at lunchtime. Argh. Forgot it was pension day. All the Dear Old Things were out in force and the stress of Christmas makes the rate of Senior Moments about 4 per hundred yards. I weaved and dodged and shifted their trolleys for them when they forgot where they were, removed some blasted sprog's sticky hand from where it latched onto my trousers, grabbed an armful of frozen pizzas and buggered off out of there.

No,wait, the sub-heading of this bit is Overtime not Trolley Rage. My brain is fried from doing overtime. Walkies tomorrow. Providing it's not pissing down or lightning striking.

Sydney to Gosford ferries

(Letting my fingers do the walking)



Hawkesbury River railway bridge opening May 1st 1889

Brisbane Water got busier after the railway came. More day-trippers up from Sydney, more people buying land and moving up here from Sydney or down here from further up the Coast.

Before the railway you got here from Sydney by slow boat round the back of Sydney and up the Hawkesbury or up the coast on a small ferry from Circular Quay or Darling Harbour. Must've been a long queasy trip on rough days.

"The SS Woy Woy runs every Tuesday and Friday at 8am from the foot of Erskine St for Gosford and Woy Woy, calling at Merritt's Wharf(Cockle Creek), Blackwall, Green Point, and New Brighton, or elsewhere as required; fares, 2s 6d single, 4s return.
The SS Erina also leaves Russell's Wharf, at the foot of Bathurst St, at 7.45am on Thursday, picking up passengers at Dawes' Point, if signalled, at 8am; fare 2s 6d return." (1909 tourist handbook)

The foot of Eskine Street is at Darling Harbour in Sydney, just round the corner from Circular Quay. Bathurst Street ends at Darling Harbour as well, right up in Cockle Bay. Dawes Point is at the southern foot of Sydney Harbour Bridge, the CBD side.

2s 6d should be two shillings and sixpence and 4s four shillings. That's Australian currency pre-1966.

The handbook twitters on a bit about the scenery:

"The matchless beauty of the landscape in this portion of the State, the charm of swelling hill and sylvan valley, of precipitous cliff and rocky gorge, of grassy upland and impenetrable masses of forest, is enhanced by the presence of picturesque creeks, romantic bays, and broad sheets of glittering water, the whole presenting a series of magnificent spectacles."

Dunno about "matchless", there's heaps of beautiful places in the world, but otherwise I'd agree with that. Bloody lovely place to live is Brisbane Water.

In 1915 the Gosford Times said "Card-sharpers continue to ply their nefarious calling on trains between Sydney and Gosford. One of their latest victims was relieved of 17 pounds in a very short space of time." Nowadays it's poker.com on yer mobile phone.




Sydney to Woy Woy map showing Hawkesbury River (left) and railway line completed in 1889 (middle) and the coast up which ferries came from Sydney Harbour.

The Sydney ferry dropped you off at Gosford usually but might go down to Woy Woy after or you could get a local ferry from Gosford.



When you got to Woy Woy it looked like this photo from Phegan's 1924 Great Northern Guide. That wharf's in the same spot as the current wharf.

"Goldenia" that building in the middle says. A quick Google suggests Goldenia was either a brand of tea or a race horse.

The closest building, the shed, is about where the commercial wharf is now. The foreground in the lower right of the photo is now Anderson Park, where the annual Fun Run starts. The creek is gone but until about 18 months ago there was a fountain over it.




Wagstaff Point sometime between 1900 and 1910. Manly House stands where the progress hall stands now and the wharf hasn't shifted.


"WOY WOY TO THE BAR
Two launches running, including the latest, largest, and fastest motor launch on the river - The Conqueror - seating accommodation for 150 passengers.
Passengers landed anywhere along the River.
Don't miss a trip to Ettalong Beach, Wagstaff Point, Pretty Beach, Broken Bay, Lion Island etc.. Lovely sandy beaches, surf bathing, good fishing. Hot and cold water free. Return fare 1s. Take the White Ferry. J Murphy, Proprietor." (Peninsula News history article)

What "the Bar" is I can't find out. At a guess I'd say it's the name of the wharf or pub in Sydney where the ferry left from.


Some of the ferries

S.S. Woy Woy was a 24 ton cargo and passenger ferry launched in 1901. In 1905 her fares from Circular Quay to Gosford were 2/6d and 4/- return (two shillings and sixpence, four shillings) Tuesdays and Fridays.

History of Woy Woy - scroll down for photo of the ferry and 1905 land sale in Woy Woy township.

SS Gosford did the Sydney run and also went up to Port Stephens up past Newcastle.

S.S. General Gordon operated a regular passenger and cargo run between Gosford and Sydney. It was a stern-wheel paddle-steamer of 164 tons and carried passengers across the Hawkesbury before the bridge was opened (top photo).

On a charity fund-raiser trip in 1926, says the book, "she was loaded with excited passengers bound for Wisemans Ferry ... The trip was not without incident. The ship broke down and rolled alarmingly in Broken Bay. Gosford band master Dick Wells struck up the tune, '... and he played his ukelele when the ship went down!'" Possibly not the best idea a band master ever had.

The ferry was fixed but then the male passengers spent some time in the pub at Wisemans steadying their nerves and the ferry finally got back to Gosford after 10PM that night, where the passengers' families were getting toe-y on the wharf.

S.S. Erina was damaged by fire in 1911 while she was moored down at Balmain wharf in Sydney. The ship's fireman (stoker) was asleep on board but managed to get off without being roasted alive and the fire brigade came. The ferry survived and was sold in 1934 to an R.W. Miller for use on Sydney Harbour. She was replaced by the Erina II, which was a 77 ton diesel powered vessel built at Empire Bay by Arthur Davis and sons.


Extra

Koolewong level crossing & trains - local trainspotting from Trent "Raichase" Nicholson