Poo tubes

(Where the fuck have I been all this time?)



See that red circle at the left edge of map? Just along that road a bit are the sewerage farm and the tip (garbage dumping place). I woulda put them into the map exactly where they were but it was either do a new map with an extra bit down that side then have a nice long lay down or post this map and actually fucking update the blog already.


The yellow bits are the main road, the grey bits are the shops, the row of black dots is the railway line, the other dotty bits are the main beaches and the green bits are parks and reserves and wetlands. And the blue lines are creeks. Unless they're really straight in which case they're drains that used to be creeks.


Round the streets of Woy Woy and all the other places I walk, I see council workers fixing roads, electricity company workers getting branches off powerlines after the wind, Telstra workers putting in new phone lines and fiddling about down holes with PMG covers, the garbos in their truck picking up the bins, and stuff like that.

All stuff that makes a town tick. It happens all around us every day and we hardly notice it.

But we'd be stuffed without it. Civilisation is supposed to be 2 hot meals from breakdown. I reckon it's more like a week with the sewerage backed up. Gazundas and latrines just wouldn't cut it in urban society. We'd be rioting in the streets.

Anyways. This post was inspired by something I overheard on the train from a bloke who laid sewerage pipes for a living. He was talking specifically about Woy Woy and other local towns. This is the gist of what he said:

Where you've got yer older suburbs and towns, like Woy Woy, you've got an older sewerage system.

Under a given road there's a sewerage line and into it empties the sewerage lines from each house.

All well and good.

But then you get one of these places where some developer knocks down an old house. The old house had one sewerage line servicing one or two loos (toilets), a couple of adults, 2.4 kids and the Christmas influx of aunts and uncles and cousins. Up they all get in the morning, flush the loo and off to work and school.

Now that house is knocked down and half a dozen units are slapped up in its place. Half a dozen units each with one or two adults and maybe the 2.4 kids and the Christmas influx of aunts and uncles and cousins. That's 6 to 12 adults, 2.4 to 14.4 kids and 6 Christmas influxes of aunts and uncles and cousins.

And up they all get in the morning, flush the loo and off to work and school. Except the main sewerage line under the street, the one that carries it all away, hasn't usually been upgraded to carry the extra load.


So, in conclusion, old streets have narrow poo tubes. And there's other stuff like water pipes bringing clean water in that can be pretty old and need flushing out and replacing etc. We had that recently in Woy Woy. I escaped the worst but Stevo copped it.

The point of this post is just to say ta to all the blokes (and chicks) who fix the poo tubes and so on.


Collection of Lost Things


All my old St. John's photos

I've been collected again. Over at a fun Aunty project called Lost Places.

It's essentially my Gone set of photos writ large and with the whole country doing it. Pop over for a gander.


Local linkage

Craig wants to hear from locals about Empire House at Empire Bay.

Fabulous and fabulously named collection of Woy Woyan and Gosford area memorabilia and photos at Gostalgia. Ta very kindly for the linkage, Michael. Hope to fuck I got your link right this time.


Where the fuck have I been for the last 2 months?

Crook. Sick. Buggered. Stuffed. Bit of trouble with my own poo tubes. Gross symptoms. Let's not go there.

Spent most of it sleeping it off then, for the last couple of weeks, dozing on the sofa with the remote. Saw that thing where that guy died wheelie-bin surfing down Kingsview Drive/Lone Pine Avenue (the high steep bit is Kingsview, the long straight bit is Lone Pine) and watched 16-year-old Jessica Whatsit sail in through the heads after a lone trip round the world in a pink boat.

Still crook but managed a shuffle round the block every day this week so things are looking up again.

Okay. That's zonked me out for the day. Off back to the sofa with a blanket and a nice big cuppa tea. See you again soon-ish.

Hairy maps of Tassie

Rambling

This is actually a sick note but I thought I'd enliven it with a title from a visitor to the Ducktionary. When you get a stats thingy on yer blog, you can go in and have a gander at how people got to you and what search terms the random visitors used. Like "hairy map of Tassie".

Ducktionary's visitors' favourites:

tracky daks
guest of her majesty
sausage sanger


And, in a short-lived burst of energy, I added The Illustrated Ducktionary. From little things slightly bigger things grow, to misquote Kev Carmody.


Great Manly Debate Part 2

Michael popped up to the look-out at Gerrin Point for us. Well, slogged really. There's outdoor stairs and crap and we've been having a parting shot from summer over the last week or so. Hot sunny days. Thank yer kindly, Michael, for services to Coasties.

Michael's Gerrin Point photos


To get to my point

So anyways, this sick note. I am buggered. Too much pain lately on top of too much family-related angst. Have been up this morning since fucking 4 A-fucking-M. Again.

It's now fucking 10AM and I've been slaughtering typos and deleting circular sentences and random irrelevancies in this post for about 3 hours. Might be time to give up and lay on the sofa for a week with a stack of DVDs. Call it two weeks, just to be on the safe side. Which is ... the start of April. Might be back before that but don't put money on it.


P.S.

I am not nearly dead, ta for asking. I get emails from lurkers every now and then asking if I've got something fatal. Much appreciated emails BTW but don't worry about me popping off.

Bullimah Beach & the Great Manly Debate

(Bouddi/Killcare walkies #6? 7? Technically it's #2 of the Killcare walkies but Hardys Bay and Killcare look like one small suburb when yer walking them and they're both on the Bouddi so let's go ahead and call it Bouddi/Killcare #6 or 7.)

Lovely day today for walkies and photos and I'm stuck inside with an aching gut and a pile of work I'm ignoring. Been off sick for days.




Bulimah Beach. Tiny wee beach, as you can see, tucked in between Putty Beach and Gerrin Point on the Bouddi peninsula. Or the Bouddi, as she is known locally. That's bood-eye not bood-ee and bood rhymes with hood not food.




Where the top photo's taken from. Beach Drive (lower) and Grandview Crescent Putty Beach/Killcare. Technically, the suburb is Killcare but who wants to live at a suburb name when they can live at a beach name?

Had a trot round the streets of Putty Beach/Killcare. This is every-street walkies I'm doing after all. Like anywhere with views, there's plenty of big pricey houses looming along the view streets but, like everywhere around Woy Woy/Brisbane Water, there's plenty of the nice quiet old places left.




Just for pretty. Hill-top above Grandview Crescent Killcare/Putty Beach.




This nice quiet old place looks to me to be the perfect place to walk home from the beach to.

After a nice long day messing about at the beach, you'd plod along the road in yer thongs, lairy beach towel over yer shoulder, head down and a fine crust of salt still drying on yer skin. Along the road with the banksia trees all along one side, up a bit of a hill, through a lane, round a corner and there's home ahead of you. Cool shady veranda with its scatter of old dogs and deck chairs. There's icy cold lemonade in the old Kelvinator and and there'll be chops and mashed potatoes and peas for dinner to finish off a splendiferous summer's day.

Heaven.

Bonus photo: On the beach (sand, surf, peeps, dogs, `nother view of Bullimah Beach)


Is it is or is it ain't?



This is a close-up of the view photo from the Putty Beach post. Much more detail at this size. I got a new camera but it's only a PLC (pissy little camera) with 10MP res so this much detail means the thing is pretty close.

Hmm. Look at that wee faint headland to the left of the big clear one. Didn't notice that bit before.

So, is this big cliffy bit Manly/North Head or the Careel Headland or Long Reef? Opinions vary.

Okay, opening up the map of Sydney. Getting out ruler to check out this "Manly is only 30 kays" (18.64 miles) business... Hmm.




Bangelly Head (Careel Headland Res) is tall enough to be the close one. Long Reef is long but would not be visible from the Putty Beach angle. Manly is tall enough and cliffy enough and sticks out far enough but has gotta be the wee faint headland furtherest away.

Looks like it's Careel and Manly. Michael and Steveo win this debate and the admiration of their peers.

`Course when Michael goes up there to see what it says at Gerrin Point look-out, it might be a whole `nother debate.


Manly stuff

While we're on the Manly/North Head subject, we may as well have a gander at some links and a factoid.

In WWII there were fortifications up there. North Battery on North Head had two 9.2 inch Mk X guns, the Shelley Battery (Shelly Head, Manly) had one QF 12 pounder gun and, across the other side of the mouth of the Harbour, the Signal Battery on South Head had two 6 inch Mk XI guns.

Manly Ferry photo, factoids & video
North Head Quarantine Station (outsides & insides of buildings)
Quarantine Station factoids
Old photos of the Quarantine Station (And old rock carvings made by the quarantined)
Manly (harbour side) factoids & photos
Manly Beach (north side) photos & factoids

Enjoy. I'm off to lay with my feet in the sun and an icy cold lemonade in my hand.

Putty Beach

Back again. How was yer February? Hot (Straylyans)? Snowy (Mericans)? Hello, Melbourne, that big hail all melted now?

New computer's buggerising around, by the way, so this won't be a very talky post.



Through the banksias and pigface to the sand.




Putty Beach is an ocean beach. That's the Tasman Sea right there.

Ettalong Beach is an estuary beach but Putty Beach is on yer actual coast proper, on the edge of the Tasman. Which is between us and Kiwiland (New Zealand) and at the bottom of the South Pacific Ocean. (Mappage at end of post.)




Anyways, it's a beach. From it you can see Barrenjoey Head, where the lighthouse is. Squint a bit and you can see it in this photo. White job with a bit of red.

You can drive to Putty Beach from Ettalong, over The Rip Bridge, along Empire Bay Road, right into Wards Hill Road, right into The Scenic Drive, round two hairpin bends, left into Beach Drive and down to the carpark at the end. You can a bus there from Woy Woy station. In the Christmas holidays, you can get a ferry there, the old Cockatoo ferry.




A few people told me that big cliffy bit there on the left is Manly/North Head but it looks way too close to me. On the other hand, I got no idea what it is so maybe they're right.

North Head is one side of the mouth of Sydney Harbour. The Manly ferry (the biggest of the Sydney ferries) goes across to the inside part of North Head, the Manly part. It goes fairly close to the mouth of the harbour and when the sea is really big the Manly ferry gets cancelled. (Mappage at end of post.)




Putty Beach, Hardys Bay, Barrenjoey Head, which way to Sydney.




Manly, North Head, Sydney Harbour and which way to Woy Woy.

More maps




American readers note that this is a thong. Now you can see why we giggle when you talk about wearing thongs on yer bums (butts).


Random linkage

Links I've been meaning to link to for yonks. Don't even remember what half of them are. Consider them a lucky dip.

Ferries of Sydney (ferries, obvs)

APSCCG (native plants photos & factoids)

The sport of A-to-Zedding (some to do with maps?)

Cactus Bones (pretty pictures)


Bloody sidebar is still in semi-exile at the bottom of the site. Fucked if I can find the code for how to get the bastard back where it was.

Grab Bag

Quick snippet. Normally I don't blog in Feb. It's my annual blogging holiday.


Winter wonderland

From the safe distance of an Australian summer, this snowstorm business in Pommyland and Europe and America looks rather fun. I loved the story of the train passengers stuck in the Chunnel for 18 hours with nothing to eat but packet sandwiches and fruit loops. And the thing where Washingtown has been shut down by massive piles of snow is quite entrancing for this snow-virgin sweltering away in Woy Woy. `Course the Washingtonians and Chunnel users might see it slightly differently.

Must pop over very soon to my fellow bloggers and see how they're enjoying it.


Local linkage

Trawler at Woy Woy (nice arty snap of Woy Woy Channel)

Pop across to Stevo's for some excellent local WWII snaps and info. Love that old landing barge at Brooklyn, ta mate. Also, that Woy Woy Theatre graphic you did is the one that was where Woolies is now right? Looks great.

Michael puts his new camera going through its paces at the Rumbalara Res look-out. My favourite is the misty one of Lion Island.

The Biker Bunnies are hard at it again on the Gossie to Woy Woy on the cycle path with some nice scenery snaps.

Bivoir always gives good photo. Check out Umina Beach in HDR.

Caitlyn and the knocking shopper: the tale of a lonely brain cell.

Photo of Ett jett, the Ettalong jetty on Ferry Road, the wharf from which you catch the ferry across to Palm Beach. The fact that the ferry wharf road is called Ferry Road leads to confusion amonst non-locals trying to get back before the last ferry goes.

Non-local: "Excuse me, where's the ferry road?"
Local: *points* "Go along there a bit."
Non-local: "What's it called?"
Local: "Ferry Road."
Non-local: "Yes, thanks, but what's it called?"
Local: "Ferry Road."
Non-local: *cries*

Add in an accent and/or a tenuous grasp on English and you end up escorting the poor dears down far enough to point at the sign.

Snakes and snoozing

Back at last. There was computer issues and some other offline crapulence which was really boring so we won't go into it. How was yer Chrissy?




Discarded snake skin. Found it under the holiday house. Apparently it’s a diamond python’s skin.

It’s very cool. Got no idea how to turn it inside out though, without ripping the bastard to shreds.




Saw a live snake too. One like this (Wiki photo). Red-bellied black snake, Pseudechis porphyriacus. Very sexy. Not a snake to go feral and bite the cautious admirer but very sexy.


The rest of my holidays was more snoozing than bushwalking. The weather was all over the shop, pissing down one day, back to normal stinking hot summer the next. I vegged out on the veranda and watched the brush turkeys and their chicks.

Photos & factoids




This poor little bugger died not long after this shot. Thought he was going to make it for a while there but no. He kept nearly getting to his feet then collapsing again.

He’s a baby brush turkey and he was mauled by a cat or something. Cats are not native to Australia so most of the native animals have no defences against them.

Buried him under the house and put a rock on top of him so he wouldn’t get dug up again and scattered about the place.

There was a brush turkey’s incubation mound further down the hill so maybe there was another chick that made it.

Roosting in trees
Immortalised on local bus-stop
Single Brush Turkey Seeks Same


Since I got back, the weather has been shit for walkies. Up around 34 (95-96F) one day, dark as night and stormy the next.


Haiti

Poor bastards. Bloody poor country, as corrupt as fuck, war, 3 hurricanes in the last 4 years (about that) and now the place is totalled by a massive earthquake.

So it's a bit off when those christian types were refusing aid to some people on the grounds they were of the voodoo religion.

The throw-away lines on the news about Haiti being the “home of the zombie” weren't terribly helpful either. Might be a bit smarter to point out that yer actual proper Voodoo/Hoodoo/Voudon/etc. zombie has fuck-all to do with the movie zombies.

Real zombies are people willingly taking part in a religious ceremony. They are spirit-ridden. They invite a good spirit into their body for a little while for religious purposes.

They aren’t green and oozing and they ain’t interested in eating your brain.

And while we’re on the subject, the voodoo dolls are bullshit too. They sell them for the tourists in New Orleans (and fuck knows they could use the tourist dollars, poor bastards) but they’re a Hollywood thing too, whitefella misinterpretation and invention. Sticking pins in dolls was something done in Europe many moons ago.

I loved and that Big Brother/zombie apocalypse piss-take on SBS but I do not enjoy my ABC making the sort of random statements I expect to find on bloody channel 9 or 7.

Now where’s my blood pressure meds?


Zombie linkage

Proper zombies

Haitian Voudon at Wiki
Voodoo Brings Solaced to Grieving Haitians
Living Vodou (podcast)
Louisiana Voodoo
Lucky Mojo (Hoodoo, similar to Vodou & Voodoo)

Movie zombies

Shaun of the Dead (rom zom com par excellence)
White Zombie
Bloody Ian Fleming
Dead Set (Big Brother vs the zombie apocalypse, on SBS)


Right. I'm off to set up base camp on the lower slopes of Mount Inbox.

Filthy dirty filking

(Random hung-over, Christmas-party fueled whingeing & filking*)



O Christmas bush
O Christmas bush
O Cerapetalum apetalum

In New South Wales at Christmas time
You come out in December heat

O Christmas bush
O Christmas bush
O Cerapetalum apetalum

With petals red and orange too
Only after pollination

O Christmas bush
O Christmas bush
O Cerapetalum apetalum


There's also Cerapetalum gummiferum which is the same until you get up close and see the leaves are arranged differently. And the gummiferum is pretty tall and "during World War II it provided the butts for all rifles made in Australia". Huh.


Off to my fourth Christmas party this week this arvo. May not survive. Normally I avoid office parties like the fucking plague but I called in a lot of favours this year and the payback is showing up as stand-in date. The next person to offer me a mince pie is dead.


Local linkage

Bike bunnies do Umina

Dickhead factor rockets during school holidays


Woy Woy as was

Love the photos and stories of old Woy Woy in the local rag. Woy Woy Steve is back writing them again and Fred Landman and Keith Whitfield are regulars and I've got one from June 2009 by Bruce Richards.

Sometimes the old buildings they talk about, old cinemas and milk bars and so forth, are gone now and sometimes they're just re-invented but I can usually see where they were or their remnants are. Adds a whole new depth to my walkies to have personal histories tied to the streets and buildings of my town.

Keep writing, guys.


Christmas story re-visited

How the angel got on top of the tree (click 'n' scroll)


Want my thingy in yer whatsit?

I'm off for Xmas. Off away from the madding crowd to a place where the bush turkeys roam free.

I'll be back ab-o-u-t ... Let's call it mid January. The 16th. Yeah.

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Have yerselves a merry little Xmas.


* Filking ain't really dirty. I mentioned it to a Dear Old Thing one day and she reacted like it was a very naughty swear-word and now when I say it I get a naughty little thrill. It's that thing where you replace some or all of the words of an existing tune with your own words, like I did with Oh Christmas Tree. Go filk yerself (with links).

Up and down

(Random Woy Woy walkies)



Here we're looking north-east or east-north-east across The Bays (Correa Bay, Horsfield Bay, Phegans Bay & Woy Woy Bay) to Brisbane Water proper and the low part of Saratoga/Davistown and beyond that to Kincumba Mountain. Though it was Killcare/the Bouddi but the map says no.

One blue-sky day in the last week synched with a day I was well enough to take the camera out. Got a mate to drive me up to a street with views, tottered out of the car, took a couple of snaps, back home again.

Spent most of the week writhing round on the sofa in another bloody bout of bloody gut pain. No end of fucking fun. The rest of the week it was lovely and cool but way too cloudy for camera outings.




The bark falls off some of the gum trees at this time of year. You can see some of the bark in the cleft of this tree. The spots and dots and dimples of colour and texture where the bark has fallen away are normal.


Chrissy is nearly upon us. There is a frenzy of shopping and barbeque-ing and getting off yer face on the weekends and the rest of it. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.


Local linkage

Bloggers

We've lost another blogger. Ian at Grumpy Old Journo. A local. He blogged from 2005, 4 years, same as me. He will be missed.

But gained a blogger at Copa (Copacabana, a local beach).


Others

Bensvillians unite at facebook. And yes, that thumbnail is one of my photos.

Photos of Woy Woy and Lion Island from the Kur-ring-gai National Park.

Pop over to Bryan's family history page for a great old photo. Bryan is locally connected through Picketts and Humpries at Holy Cross Church/St. Joseph's in Kincumber.

Other family historians with local connections are welcome to email me their website address for local linkage.


The ferry news



Cockatoo ferry AKA Codock II AKA the lovely old one is running again. Timetables

Drive-by

Wagstaffe Wharf Mulhall Street Wagstaffe

This is a drive-by posting. Been out all day and about to go out again. I am a wee bit drunk.

Anyways, there was another bloody dust-storm today. My throat's as dry as a dead dingo's donger and that's after all the beer and some hideous cask wine. Will have a furry tongue in the morning.

And I am fucking hating this evil early summer crap.

That is all.

And the photo is there because everyone likes it.


Local lickage

Coast not perfect but we love it, Pulse survey finds

Green Point 1839

(Green Point walkies #5)



Always charge yer bloody camera before going walkies. I bloody well forgot and the bastard died on me one photo in. Nothing worked. No amount resting it, no amount of swearing at and threatening to gouge out its USB port with a rusty knife, nothing worked.

But the sky is blue and the water is a very nice shade. It was a warm day. Spring has not sprung this year and we've gone straight from a mild winter into a red hot summer.

This was taken from a nameless laneway off Avoca Drive between Merindah Avenue and Edgewater Avenue, on the water side of Avoca Drive.


About Green Point

From the history obelisk thingo (Green Point 1789) we know when Green Point was settled by whitefellas and the name of the first one:

"This spot is on the original grant of
640 acres of Crown land
Promised to John H. Edwards
By Sir Ralph Darling in 1829
And granted on 30.9.1839
To Major Henry Smyth who called it
GREEN POINT"


The local history whatsit at the library has some stats:

"1788 - The true extent of the Aboriginal population in the Brisbane Water District is unknown, however it is estimated that several hundred people lived in the area before white settlement.

1823 - James Webb, the first white settler of Brisbane Water, takes up land at The Rip.

1828 - The Census of 1828 records approximately 100 persons in the Brisbane Water Police District, which included Lake Macquarie, Brisbane Water and Lower Portland Head. This figure did not record the number of aboriginal persons, however a census of aboriginals in Brisbane Water taken in the same year records 65 persons between the Hawkesbury River and Wyong. This figure is increasingly believed to underestimate severely the native population, which may have numbered several hundred.

1836 - 621 persons
...
1901 - 7,186 (Census)
...
1947 - 18,700
...
2001 - 161,204 - (Preliminary estimate)"

So 3 years before the major got his land, there was 621 whitefellas and perhaps the same amount of blackfellas living round the whole of Brisbane Water. Not what you'd call a crowd.

On the "1843 Brisbane Water list of Electors" a "Smyth, Henry (Major)" is listed as having "Freehold" on a property at "Broadwater".

Bear in mind that "Broadwater" is not The Broadwater, up between Fagans Bay and Point Frederick on yer 2009 map of Brisbane Water, or even Kincumber Broadwater. It's a vague and confusing term that was applied to pretty much everywhere on Brisbane Water at some point in the past.

In Greville's Official Post Office Directory NSW - 1872 there's no-one listed as living at Green Point but some of the names on the list of locations don't exist anymore (the names not the locations) and some are extremely vague.

In 1882, waterfront land and big fat blocks were being sold at Green Point as "Suitable for Country Residences, Villa Sites and Farms".

In 1911, another land sale has a map of Green Point showing 2 existing waterfront cottages, Green Point Wharf, Green Point Post Office, three un-named streets and Avoca Drive down as "Kincumber Road". Looks like the 1882 land auction made bugger-all impact.

The un-named road leading to the wharf looks like the current Orana Street, just near the Bayside Drive lights.

Have yerself a gander at the Sub-division maps for Green Point and Kincumber, which borders on Green Point in the north.


Nowadays Green Point is a thriving suburb-slash-village of the Greater Gosford/ the Gosford City Council area/ Brisbane Water district. Bustling Downtown Green Point is a supermarket, a bottle-shop (liquor store), a local history marker and a nice park, a teasing hair-dresser, a couple of estate agents and another shop I can't remember for the life of me.


Code Red

Most of New South Wales was on a total fire ban during the week, due to the drought and the wind and stuff.

Then the storms came on Friday and there were fires started here and there by lightning strikes. Nothing here, thank fuck, but summer ain't over yet. Hasn't even officially started.

Are you prepared to survive? - checklists & stuff at the RFS site

I've got me go bag sorted, like they said after Black Saturday. Photos, insurance policy, data back-up, towel, clean underpants. Grab and go.


Local linkage

My trek to Nepal - local bushwalker training for trekking

Kayaking Ettalong to Iron Ladder Beach - good photos, Iron Ladder is just near Box Head and the Palm Beach ferry goes quite near it.

We tease to please

(Green Point walkies #4)



Nice old weatherboard house on Asca Drive. Looks about 1900 to 1920s. But don't quote me on that. Can't find the book to check.




It had both brick piers (stumps) and stone ones but the stone ones are not original. They're too wide for their sheets of tin (to stop the white-ants). Original stone stumps are as narrow as these brick ones. Sometimes all the old stone piers on an old house get replaced, sometimes just some of them.




Green Point traffic is on a go-slow for a bit while they rip up bits of Avoca Drive (the main road) around Bayside Drive. Not sure what they're doing on this side but on the other side it looked like they were widening it.

Avoca Drive is one of the main roads of the Lower Central Coast/ Greater Gosford/ Brisbane Water area. If you're in Woy Woy and you want to go to Bloody Erina (Erina Fair, one of them big shopping centres) you go over The Rip Bridge to Daleys Point, along Empire Bay Drive past St. Huberts Island, Empire Bay, Bensville and Kincumber South, left onto Avoca Drive and through Kinumber, past Yattalunga, round and up through Green Point and right into The Entrance Road, past the barracks then right at Fountain Plaza and up Karalta Road and there you are at Bloody Erina.




Stared at this sign for a good long while as I walked towards it. It looked like it belonged to the real estate agent and I wondered how the fuck teasing prospective home buyers was a good idea. Eventually I noticed the name if the hairdresser at the top of the sign. Jesus, I'm quick.




Just for pretty. Mangrove stump in the shallows.


Bonus photo



The lovely old wooden ferry at her mooring in Cockle Channel not far from Central Wharf (where you get off for the Davo) at Davistown.

She still does some runs over to Hardys and so forth. They changed the timetable again so I better get a new one. Haven't been on her for a bit. She's my favourite local ferry. Possibly my favourite ferry ever.


Google-botted

My stats are showing heaps of human and machine visits from Googlebot HQ. Must find out what that's about before I crash or something. Am I being checked out for some sort of fabulous feature thingy on the blogspot blog about blogspot blogs? The Inaugural Blogger Award for the Gratutious Use of the Word Fuck in a Walkies Context? Or maybe the googlebot just got the hiccups.

Along the water

(Green Point walkies #3)



Starting point. Rocky Point in fact. Bottom of Orana Road.

To get to this park, come down Avoca Drive from The Entrance Road and turn right into Bayside Drive at the lights or Orana Road just after them.

If you're coming from Woy Woy, come up Maitland Bay Drive and over The Rip Bridge and up Empire Bay Drive to the wee stone church at the roundabout in Kincumber and turn left into Avoca Drive and go straight through Kincumber then up the hill and round and left into Orana Road just before the lights.




Wee old houses nestled between big flash houses on Point Frederick.

This is pretty much the same as anywhere there's big pricey houses along the water round Woy Woy and Brisbane Water and up and down the Central Coast. There's still some wee old houses from before the seventies, before the war and before the first war when land was cheap and there was fuck-all houses around Brisbane Water anyways.

It's like a miniature history of the Coast on one street. This particular street being Albany Street, the street running from stem to stern of Point Frederick AKA Longnose. In the background yer looking at Rumbalara Reserve (hill in shadow) and what appears to be Waterview Park AKA Presidents Hill above the trots in Gosford. Locals will know Presedents Hill as the hillside on which The Castle sits.




Bit of the park. It's a narrow strip of grassed land between the water and the houses with a private jetty and boat parked opposite nearly every house. Again, same all round Woy Woy and Brisbane Water.




Some mangroves can get quite tall. These ones were about 15 metres (49.21 feet). Usually they're 2 to 6 metres (6.56 to 19.69 feet).




The inevitable tinny.




A wee muddy creek at Ironbark Point, about halfway up the park. Could be a storm drain all full after the bit of rain we had in October but it looked more creeky with the trees round it.




Scribbly gum bark found in the wee bit of bush beside Kenmare Road. Scribbly gums are Eucalyptus haemastoma. The link has a good photo of the tree.

The scribbles are made by a wee tiny beastie, the larvae of the Scribbly Gum Moth (Ogmograptis scribula).


Bonus photo



Woy Woy to Koolewong footbridge as seen from Green Point.

Much clearer view of the footbridge. Couldn't find the bastard last week.


New new timetable

Local ferries timetable. Yep, same ferry as takes the Dear Old Things to the Davo.

I don't get paid for the local ferry adverts, by the way. I just love ferries.

Green Point 1789

(Green Point walkies #2)



Marking a landing point of the exploration by Governor Arthur Phillip of the Port Jackson (now Sydney) colony.

Through the gap in the trees there you can see the footbridge and railway bridge from Woy Woy to Koolewong.




There was a metal plate on each side of the obelisk.

"The obelisk marks the place where
[On] the 9th of June 1789
They landed while Captain John Hunter,
Later to become second Governor of the colony,
Took the latitude at noon that day
That he computed to be
33 [degrees] 26' 30" South"




"This is the Northernmost area reached
By a party led by
Governor Captain Arthur Phillip R.N.
In an expedition of exploration & discovery
In search of suitable farm land
Governor Phillip was accompanied by
Captains Hunter, Collins & Johnston with
Surgeon White."




"This area, referred by Captain Phillip as
North West Branch of Broken Bay
Was later named Brisbane Water.
[White] Settlement did not begin until 1823.
34 years after its discovery"




"This spot is on the original grant of
640 acres of Crown land
Promised to John H. Edwards
By Sir Ralph Darling in 1829
And granted on 30.9.1839
To Major Henry Smyth who called it
GREEN POINT"

The plate at the bottom was the usual one saying the obelisk was bunged up in 1988 for the 200 year anniversary of the white settlement of Port Jackson (Sydney).




Point Frederick (Longnose) from Rocky Point at Green Point. Green Point is the suburb. Rocky Point and Ironbark Point are points within Green Point. Make sense?

Anyways, I am quite chuffed about getting this photo. Longnose is very hard to capture. It usually just fades into the background of the shore behind it. This time it was outlined clearly against the its background. Bloody lucky capture. Especially considering I've been trying for it since bloody 2005.

Its background this time is Point Clare and West Gosford.

Green Point mappage

Gov. Phillip thingies from the March 1788 visit at The Rip Bridge, Pearl Beach & St. Huberts Island.


Local linkage
Ferry news
Updated ferries timetable, includes putt putt day runs & footy ferry

Beach photo
Some of them anti-climate change peeps made a 350 on Umina Beach a couple of weekends back. Not entirely what it was for but apparently they don't like global warming. Fair enough.

The photo was taken from Mt Ettalong Road looking down on the eastern end (caravan park end) of Umina Beach.

Old photos
Golden Oldies want to see your old photos and memorabilia. November 11th at the Ettalong bowls.

"This is an informal day and encompasses local schools, factories and telephone exchanges pre-1960s ... With the passing of time our numbers are thinning and perhaps the pre-1970s would like to join us".

Contact details in local rag

Green Point

(Green Point walkies #1)

Back. Somewhat refreshed from my holiday but shit continues to go down in my offline life so not really all that thrilled to be home.

Anyways. Green Point. Just before I went on holiday I started walking Green Point.




It's on the eastern side of the estuary (Brisbane Water) just above Yattalunga. It's a narrow strip of houses along Avoca Drive, squeezed in between the water and Kincumba Mountain.




There's not much flowering this year due to the bloody dry winter we had. This is an Illaware flame tree, a baby one leaning over an overgrown creek (Egan Gully [Creek]) in Beatties Road which is at the bottom of the hill, right next to the christian school, just as you head up Avoca Drive into Green Point proper. It's a quiet road with just a few houses and a couple of eldery golden retrievers that wander out of their front yards and gaze up at you lovingly.




There's lots of places round Brisbane Water where there's flat rocks at the waterline. The park at the end of Lexington Parade and Merindah Avenue is one of those places. There's wee tiny rock pools and a scattering of broken shells and sea glass and, sometimes, stripy rocks where you can see how the sediment was laid down or whatever it was all those aeons ago. Cool.




Can you see it? Locals should be able to pick up the shape of it. It's the footbridge over at Woy Woy/Koolewong, the one with all the wires. It's photos like this that remind me to get a new camera already. This one has reached its limits.




Just for pretty. Tascott and yacht. The other side of Brisbane Water always looks so far away in these photos I take across it. I swear it's not half that far.




I walked fuck-all of Green Point on my first walk there. Just three tiny streets. They all had a park at the end and I slothed out on the grass for a while. It was a warm day. We skipped spring this year and went straight into summer. I laid there under a tree listening to the breeze making the casuarina trees whisper in their soft howl and watching a couple of pink and grey galahs fossick about for something to eat.




It's kayak season. Some local crowd at Koolewong I think it is runs a kayak tours thingy where you go on a wee tour of the estuary in their kayaks. You see an occassional hardy kayaker out on the water in winter but it's summer that's the busy season and it's par for the course to see them bobbing in the wake of the ferry as it heads round to the stop for the Davo. (Get off at Central Ave, walk up Davistown Road and turn right at Murna Road.)

Weird to put the first photo last I know but there you go.


Holiday reading

I bring you leopard porn, the bad!fic that broke Wincon 2007. Olden but golden. From the fandom that brought you yak!crack.

*hearts the internets even though it should probably take its meds more often*