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.

The hills of Yattalunga

(Saratoga walkies #4 or thereabouts)

Christ, I'm tired. Have just spent 20 minutes staring at a blank screen wondering what I was doing. Been overdoing it with the evil work thing. Couple more days then I'm done for a bit.



Mystery solved. These two are the hills of Yattalunga. Previously I'd only seen them from the other side of Brisbane Water and wasn't sure. Not a huge mystery by any means but another of the small satisfying solutions this walkies business constantly delivers.


(Embiggen)

Protea tree. The flowers were very similar to the ones I got for my Gran's birthday last year. Not as bright but they might've faded in the sun.

Lovely and nippy this morning but a sleepy warm by mid morning. I wandered along in the sun gazing at all the flowers still blooming in the tail end of summer's heat. Plenty of grevillea blazing away in full colour, a few bottlebrushes quietly fading away and the purple flowering trees are going at it like mad, blazing bright against the blue sky. The flowering gums are flowering still but nothing like as much as last year so I haven't been driven berserk by the lorikeets feeding on them.


(Embiggen, massive file & not much detail)

A few blocks away from the protea tree I spot this guy just sitting there under a willow beside a storm drain. (See him? At the bottom of the post.) Hello, I thinks, someone's lost their rubber dinosaur. But no, it's a lizard siting there. I thought a lizard would be out in the sun after the overcast days we've been having. Perhaps he forgot his SPF30.


(Embiggen)

I edged round to get a closer look at him and see if he was real. He got a bit nervous with me getting closer and kept twitching. Couldn't remember which species runs up you if you stand still (they think you're a nice safe tree) so I did a bit of twitching of my own. I tried for a head-on shot but he wasn't ready for his close-up and scauttled even deeper into the shade.

Okay. I'm off for a microwave dinner and an early night.

After the rain

(Random walkies)

How good was the weekend? All that lovely wind and rain and so deliciously cool. I even had my trackies on it was that cool. It's not bad today either and we're off daylight saving as well so autumn is properly here!



The brightest photo in a morning of iffy light. Taken by the camera itself when given a knock whilst sitting on a pigeon-shit bespattered table.

Walked halfway to Gosford this morning. Bad idea. Wanted to try out the new suspension bridge and got a bit carried away. The bridge is a footbridge and its opening has completed the walk-n-cycle path from Woy Woy to Gosford.

Took some more photos of the bridge today but they're as dark as that link above. The light was going fast. Nice bank of cumulus was coming in from the sea. Might rain again this evening.

Anyways. I was wandering along thinking happy thoughts about cool winter walkies to come and next thing I knew I was at Theroy's and hurting. Apart from the Bridge Walk I've hardly walked at all for yonks and the old legs are protesting heartily. Ah well. They'll be back on track soon with the nice cold weather coming.


(Embiggen)

Woy Woy waterfront from Brisbane Water Drive. Snapped months ago and lost in the terabyte that is my photos folder.

Left to right: a smidgeon of Pelican Island in the middle ground
Blackwall Mountain (background)
Woy Woy Memorial Park AKA Soldiers Park (pines)
Fish-n-chip shop (sloped roof)
Commercial wharf
CWA, Country Womens Association, the Pommyland equivalent is the WI.
St Vinne's formerly Roma (white, behind CWA)
Woy Woy Pub (yellow, 2 storey)
Ferry wharf (in front of CWA)


(Embiggen)

Bustling Downtown Woy Woy from Brisbane Water Drive Woy Woy. Snapped this morning in a brief bit of sunshine. The left hand dge of this photo joins up with the right hand edge of the one above. I'd bung them together but then they'd be too small for any detail.

Left to right:
Small park whose name I keep not finding out. The Bay to Bay Fun Run left from here last year.
Bay View Hotel. Same pub as was being menaced by a large cloud a few weeks again.
Wee 1950s arcade containing smallest hairdressing shop I've ever seen. Behind it, for the eagle-eyed, is the back of the facade of Noonan's.
The red veranda is a real estate (one of the many) one door along from Noonan's. You can't actually see the traffic lights but they're at the red veranda. At the lights the road stops being Brisbane Water Drive and starts being Railway Street.
The yellow building is on Railway Street as is the dark veranda you can see between it and the red veranda.
The two slim towers, background, one grey the other orange, are the 4-storey carpark outside Deepwater Plaza.
The clock tower is the Clocktower Building on Railway Street.


WTF is that thing?



6 months back they knocked down an elderly fibro cottage, a circa 1940s Presbytery and a peculiar 1950s building at the Blackwall Road-Victoria Road roundabout in Woy Woy, opposite 1914 St John's.

This is what they're bunging up in their place. It's either a new St John's (the old one is a bit cracked) or a landing pad for lopsided helicopters.

Bradfield & the Bridge

Bradfield was a shortarse, a short bloke, and by the time the Coathanger was under construction in the 1920s, a chrome dome with half his hair gone. He had a big bulgy forehead and a stiff moustache and was never off the construction site.

He was born in Queensland in 1867. His father was labourer who fought in the Crimean War. Bradfield went to U Syd (University of Sydney) and graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering in 1889.

1815 was the year a bridge was first put forward. A mere 109 years before they actually got started on the bastard. Francis Greenway it was who suggested it, a year after he'd stumbled ashore.

One of our top colonial architects, Greenway was. He got nicked for forgery and transported (sent to Australia) for 14 years. He died here in 1837 and there's nearly 50 of his buildings in the Sydney CBD. The Macquarie Lighthouse (South Head at the entrance to Sydney Harbour), Hyde Park Barracks, St. James Church and the new Government House. Not bad for an old lag (ex con).



The same year Greenway arrived, an ex-convict called Billy Blue started up a ferry service across the Harbour. Him and others ran passenger ferries until the 1840s. That's when the first horse-and-cart ferry started. It went from Dawes Point (Sydney side) to Milsons Point (North Shore). (The Coathanger goes from Dawes Point to Milsons Point.) The vehicle ferries were it until the Coathanger came. The Harbour got pretty bloody crowded with ferries criss-crossing but still people had to wait to get across. Business and the growth of the colony was suffering.

Eventually, at the beginning of the 20th century, concrete and steel technology had moved along a bit and new bridge designs were possible. Steel had got fairly cheap so Sydney could now afford a nice big bridge across the Harbour.

The competition for a design was opened in 1900. The construction started in 1924 and the Bridge was opened in 1932. He was 64. He had spent his entire adult life on the Bridge in one way or another.

In 1912 (same year the Titanic went down) he submitted a design for a suspension bridge to the design competition. In 1913 his idea for a cantilever bridge from Dawes Point to Milsons Point was accepted. In 1922 he went overseas to look at getting the bridge constructed (we didn't have enough steel then). Later that year he suggested the official documents for the bridge be changed to allow a cantilever or arch bridge rather than just a cantilever bridge.



The bridge we got.


(J Stewart & Co. 1903)

The Bridge we should've got. Not Bradfield's own cantilever bridge but one as near as dammit. This type of bridge looks better in this sketch than it would've been in real life. At the time pretty much every other bridge in the world looked like this. It would've just been a bridge. The Coathanger is an icon.

Bradfield is also responsible for the design of the City Circle (Sydney's underground railway), Brisbane's Story Bridge and a few dams and such like on other parts of the state. All good stuff.

But in his dotage he joined the Brigade of Nutters and wanted to turn the rivers inland.

Turning the rivers inland or even just one river is a scheme proposed by fuckwitted radio announcers with credulous listeners at every mention of drought. It is an feat of engineering on a scale that would give even God the heebies.

Linkage

Bradfield's Bridge - lots of pictures & stuff about the competition & design & some lovely construction photos.

Biog page at the State Records site. They have photos also. Go there and do a search on "Bradfield".

City of Sydney.nsw.gov.au - photos old & new & links down the bottom.

Powerful owls

I'm supposed to be writing a post about Bradfield the Sydney Harbour Bridge guy today. But I've got to earn some money instead so here's some reading to be going on with:


Local

The powerful owls and their 11 hectares of bush still have a DA (Development Appilcation) hanging over their heads. Don't quote me on this but I think it's that bit of land on the corner of Hillview Street and Veron Road, right opposite the high school's sheep and across the road from the golf course.

Last year there was a fire in the bike shop on Railway Street. The bike shop moved down a few doors to number 18 but the beauty salon next to it had to shut down due to fire damage. The owner didn't have the dosh to go into a new shop and had to close for 8 months.

It's open again now. It's that place near the station lights, right next to Councillor Holstein's rather garish election office. Don't know if they do a back-crack-n-sac but you can ask.


In yer face Howard

Miner bullied at work wins second pay-out. She wouldn't sign a WorkChoices agreement (individual employment contract typically nullifying your holiday pay & safety). She got bullied and harrassed by her boss. She fought back, with the help of the union. She got awarded compo to be paid by her employer. She now works for the union.


More good news

"A REVOLUTIONARY technology that uses sunlight and sea water to produce an unlimited supply of clean, hydrogen fuel could be developed within a decade, Sydney researchers say.

Leigh Sheppard, of the University of NSW, estimated that 1.6 million of the solar devices, installed on rooftops, would be able to produce enough hydrogen gas to supply Australia's entire energy needs. ... Hydrogen was a clean and efficient fuel for powering everything from vehicles to furnaces and air conditioning. "When you burn it, it gives water, so there is no pollution of the environment," [Professor Tributsch] said." (SMH)

How cool would that be? We've got so much sun here we might end up exporting power and, exports or not, we wouldn't have to drink recycled wee after all.

Texas unlikely home of world's biggest gay church. That's right, peeps. Texas. The home of George "I can't talk proper" Bush and more fundies than you can poke a stick at has a church with a 3,500 strong mostly-queer congregational. Praise the lord!

Don't live in Texas? Try the Metropolitan Community Church or the Universal Life Church.


Toughing it out

This guy is one tough cookie. An hour after he was carjacked, stuffed in the boot and his car set on fire, he was back at work.


Can't find anything about that poor bastard found dead on the tracks on Bridge Walk day. Anyone know what happened?

Bridge Walk

You better get a cuppa tea. This is going to be a long post. There's plenty of pictures but.

Yesterday was the birthday of Our Bridge, the Coathanger, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I booked for the Bridge Walk as soon as booking was open and walked it with a couple of mates from Sydney.

Would've been good to see the ceremony in the morning with the smoking (smudging) and the fly-overs and the marching bands but next time (2032). Had a thing on in the morning I couldn't wriggle out of but I got away at lunch time and set off.

All was fine and dandy until it came to swapping trains at Hornsby, as per instructions. About a hundred of us Bridge Walkers clambered off the train to Central and started up the stairs to the North Shore line. Halfway up them a garbled announcement came over the PA. Something about "a death on the tracks" at North Sydney. We descended on the station attendants like anxious lemmings. They had no idea what'd happened. The news had just come through. We were told the trains were running across the Bridge and to get back on the train we'd just got off.

It was gone.

We hung about on the platform waiting for the next one and speculated about the death to pass the time. A queue jumper crossing the track at North Sydney and got squished? Some Dear Old Thing who'd walked it at the 1932 opening had carked it on the way to todays' walk? An over-keen photographer had climbed up onto a pylon, forgotten to hang on and dropped onto the tracks in front of a moving train? Turns out this was going it a bit but there was a body found on the tracks. We'll find out what happened in a few days maybe.

The next train to Central came and we piled on. They laid on extra trains but the extra trains were full of extra people. I spent the trip squashed into a corner with a close-up on someone's elbow.

Dear Old Things on the train entertained us with their stories of walking the Bridge on opening day in 1932. Most of them were under escort by rellies and had those seat-onna-stick things to sit on if they needed a rest during the Walk. There was also a gaggle of Dear Old Things on their own, twittering with excitement and happy to still be alive for its 75th birthday.

With all that to listen to the trip didn't seem very long. As the train came up out of the City Circle (Sydney's underground railway) and across the Bridge, we goggled out the windows at the walkers and all the kids and Dear Old Things waved at each other.

I got out at North Sydney station and wandered about near the rows of port-a-loos until my mates showed then we followed the crowd.



Heading along the Bridge approach from North Sydney station. It was pretty light still at this point but by the time we were on the bridge proper, the clouds were getting darker and darker.



They gave us green hats. As we came up the rise towards the Bridge there was a bloke with a microphone exhorting us to collect our free hats in nice orderly queues. We did.



Thar she blows. Our Bridge. As we came up to it we could hear How great thou art booming from the ABC's speaker stacks.



Our boys and girls in blue made sure there was no aggro.



Finest Pommy steel and 6 million rivets.







Volunteer taking someone's photo for them. They had megaphones and were perched on those towers every fifty yards or so.



Bridge Climbers waving at us proles walking below them. There's some crowd that does regular Bridge climbs for the hale and hearty.



A chopper flew round and round the Bridge the whole time. No TV station logo and it was dark blue so it was probably PolAir.



Cross-brace thingy and directions for getting in the right lane.



Presumably access for the painters and rivet tighteners and the Inspector of Bridges. Dunno if there is such a post as the Inspector of Bridges but wouldn't it be a cool job?



More Climbers and what looked like wind chimes. Thought I heard a couple of quiet chimes over the hubbub of everyone saying "are those wind chimes?" but there was hardly a breeze. South-east (left) and south-west pylons in the background.



Looking back from between the south-west (left) and south-est pylons, at the Sydney CBD end. There's two lots of Climbers up there. See them? One lot on the left bottom corner of the span and the other up the top.



Some sort of maintenance person, possibly in charge of the spanners for the speakers. Aunty had stacks of speakers set up along the Bridge broadcasting loops of the 1932 opening day speeches, popular somgs of the day and world events happening since the Bridge was opened. It's Aunty's 75th birthday this year as well.



South East pylon. The museum is in it and there's a viewing platform up the top. You can see the whole of the Harbour and the museum has some cool movies of the construction and stuff.



Bored volunteers and a TV crew against the Sydney CBD skyline. That thin thing with the knob on top is the Sydney Tower AKA Centrepoint Tower.



And still they came. In fact, they were still coming after dark. They were given hats-with-lights-on when it got dark and on the midday news today there was some pretty footage of them walking across and the Bridge all lit up.



Electronic signs told us where to get off and an ancient road sign lent a hand.



"HAPPY 75TH *heart*" hanging out the window of a narrow late 19th/early 20th century terrace house in Cumberland Street or George Street in The Rocks.



Bored coppers and ambos (cops and paramedics) near the south end toll-gate. We were a quiet and healthy crowd and they had bugger all to do all day.



Never turn your camera off. That's when they do a fly-over. The zoom kicked in as soon as they disappeared.



National Trust building. There was a concert on there or behind it on Observatory Hill and both were swarming with people in green hats.



Heading for the pub. The Grosvenor Street off-ramp leading to The Rocks.


It was a lovely walk. Australians are a pretty calm crowd. (Except at the footy and the cricket of course.) It was great to see the Bridge at one's leisure. Gotta go on one of those climbing tours over the top one day. The train home was not as full but people were still talking about it, asking strangers "did you do the walk?" and swapping stories about their neighbour's granddad who worked on its construction and so on.


More reading
Professor Bashir, current NSW Governor, cut the ribbon for the birthday celebrations and the guy who started the Bridge Climb crowd has the sword de Groot used to cut the ribbon at the 1932 opening. (SMH)

Dr Sue Ogle was born on the Bridge in an ambulance on the way to hospital.

The Bridge is now on the National Heritage List.

Iemma AKA Morris Dilemma, current NSW Premier, bunged up a plaque on Dawes Point (the Circular Quay side) commemorating the 16 Bridge workers killed in its construction.

"[The plaque] was warmly welcomed by Jacqueline Porter, daughter of J. Alexander Faulkner, a 40-year-old rigger who was killed on March 30, 1931, when struck by a piece of metal plating that fell from a crane working overhead...
Captain Faulkner ... had served with distinction as an engineer on the Somme, had survived the "horrors of war", only to be killed on the half-complete Harbour Bridge." (SMH)

If you missed Constructing Australia: The Bridge on the telly last night, Aunty will proably be flogging it on DVD.

Crowds praised for good behaviour

Walkers stories

Links to photos and videos here at the Herald, including 10 pages of souvineer photos to buy.

Sydney Webcam showing the Bridge.

Under the Bridge with Sydney Spy.


No workie
You couldn't comment on last week's Bridge post. Blogger was having a little lie down but it's all right now. Bung yer Bridge stories up here.


Jen
Finally answered your question about the red flowering plant at the Cockle Bay Wetland. Only took me a fortnight.


Sorrento Road
Some excellent news on Davis & Settree. Dave & Barb, the current owners, left us a note to say they're adding the townhouses behind the historic building not knocking it down. Thank yer, much appreciated.

Okay. I'm all blogged out. See you Wednesday.