This years Anzac Day March over Blackwall Mountain was well
attended by over 80 local lads and one scared goat ! After last years massive
turn out it could have gone either way with the crappy weather but as I got
closer to the meeting point at the end of Mc Masters Avenue , I could see many,
many people gathered there waiting.
An unlikely gathering of old timers, young bewildered looking guys and good
portions of the local Umina / Woy Woy footy and AFL clubs plus 1 scared goat (
it had a ball evidently and kicked butt on the hill climb sections ! )
I looked at my mate and remarked this may be slightly getting out of hand and we
had a laugh at the fact we were the only 2 original marchers from 1981 out of 83
people.
After explaining to one lad that his girlfriend was not permitted on the March (
Rule 1. ) we set off en masse to conquer Blackwall Mountain ( 200 ft above sea
level ). Once we hit the top some of the younger guys discovered mud and
overcome by the rush of beer and adrenaline decided to have an impromptu mud
fight ( as you do ).
I led the marchers along the perilous cliff section heading down the the Cave,
the Cave is a large overhanging cliff that looks out over Ettalong and Broken
Bay, luckily all those years ago we chose this particular cave as it is very
long and large and quite easily fits the whole tribe each trip, here we sit and
have a bit of a smoke and a drink and a few footy songs, you may have heard us !
The downhill descent into Ettalong is probably the funniest and most dangerous
part of the march, once again, no track, just straight down the hill crashing
through the scrub and over slippery rocks, you won't see big burly footy guys
giggling like girls this often !
I must say some of the younger guys were quite spirited and I sat back and
thought " nothing has changed " as some nutter goes flying off a 5 metre high
cliff into the bush and snaps his ankle upon landing, the sight of the big
islander guy carrying him through the scrub to the bottom of the hill reminded
me something of a combination of that Dally M photo of the 2 footy players and
the photos of the fuzzy wuzzy natives of New Guinea carrying wounded Diggers in
WW2 !
You could compare what we do to the people who walk the Kokoda Trail, sure it's
nothing like it in length and toughness, but you do get an idea what it was like
to be in the bush with nothing but your wits and your mates, the same kind of
team spirit and bonding emerges amongst Aussie guys where ever they are in the
world.
So that was the march for this year , going by numbers we could crack 100 people
next year, see you there ( bring a mate ! ) Fortress Woy Woy - Project 240
Another nights poking around the
National Archives
site has delivered some great info on the airfield at Woy Woy. I have found all
the documents one could want in relation to the strip, estimations of cost,
maps, final inspection reports, hangar locations and a heap more, some maps I
will have to buy it seems but will be well worth it.
I will have to update my
article
on the airfield a bit as well with all this new info but here's the good bit's
for now.
It was built by the R.A.A.F in 1942 on land resumed for military use, there were
8 hidden hangars spread all around the airfield - 3 along Mc Masters Avenue
Between Trafalgar and Blackwall Road, one at the end of Watkin Ave adjacent to
Ocean
Beach Road
and one in Alma Avenue, the other 3 were near Albion St and Palm St. They were
built for meduim sized bombers 75' x 65' and were heavily camouflaged with local
scrub and even fake house roofs to hide a bomber under. Wherever possible local
existing roads were used for taxiways to the airfield and the paths were
screened from above by netting suspended on supports and coloured soils. The
builders were quite proud of the camouflage techniques used at Woy Woy and it
got a good review in it's final inspections by various military big wigs.
Some of the local roads were actually built by the army as taxiways or access
roads, up until now they were just tracks or marked out with pegs, some of the
roads were widened to give the appearance that they were main roads, part of the
elaborate camouflage scheme designed for the entire Peninsula.
Local holiday houses were used for accommodation and extra houses were built for
a main camp in Fairview St , also located at various point on the Peninsula were
bomb storage areas, fuel dumps and anti aircraft gun positions, the photos below
are the final product, nothing to see because it's all hidden very well !
Bingo !
Finally after 4 years of searching, I have found some pics of the
airfield that ran along Trafalgar Avenue in World War 2, of course they were
right under my nose but not tagged with the appropriate tag ( i.e airfield ,
airstrip, airport etc ) I only noticed them because I got the shits and did an
artist's impression of what it looked like for my article on
www.woy-woy.com , as I was scrolling
through the gallery at the
National Archives of Australia and noticed some
familiar landmarks in 2 aerial photos of Woy Woy taken in 1943 and there it is -
the runway !
No sign of any service area and hangars around the Alma Avenue area , but there
is what looks like a camp and a few gathered buildings up near the top left ,
the whole strip is much larger than I imagined , one thing though - where are
the planes ? Maybe they are hidden under camouflage nets as the title of the
pictures suggests ......Camouflage
data - aerial view of Woy Woy taken at 4500 feet at 15.10 hours May 5, 1943 [I]
[This photograph is one of 36 photographs. I'll fire off an email and see what the other 34 pics are of a.s.a.p, in the
meantime check out the above pics and an overlay I did on Google Earth
Bogan Rd - spiritual home of Australia's first Bogans Recently in the
news,
residents of Bogan Rd in Adelaide petitioned their local council to have the
name of the street changed..
"If you've got a very bad name and no one really
wants to live on the street then ultimately that's going to reduce the
competition," says Mr Gray from
My Home.
"You're probably going to get a lower house price."
That's pretty funny because we have had a Bogan Rd for near 100 years right here
in Booker Bay with nary a complaint from it's residents.
Bogan Rd, Ettalong was named after a local resident, Robert Bogan who had a
small farm there in the 1800's , he was actually buried in the old Bogan Rd
cemetary in 1910 alongside his wife , William Booker and his wife , a man named
Bushell and 9 victims of the
Maitland Bay shipwreck.
The cemetary was bulldozed over in the 1930's and the land sold off , the
location recorded was that it was located on Lot 4 Bogan Rd next to " Birmingham
House ".
So not only do the residents of this street have to put up with a dicky sounding
street name , they also live on an old cemetary - and this has affected house
prices ? Not in the least ! You see Bogan Rd is located in one of the more
desirable and expensive areas on the Peninsula right along some choice
waterfrontage. Land prices have risen massively in this area and the street name
bears little impact on this , the Bogan Rd in Adelaide may need all the help it
can get because ....... it's Adelaide and who the hell would want to live there
!
The March cometh ...
You may have seen the pics in my albums of a large group of
yobbos in the bush titled The ANZAC March , I will try to explain what this is
all about as no one really has yet put this event to document.
We go back to 1981 when myself and my mates decided to do the Anzac day thing
and hit Ettalong Pub for the 2 up , we headed off on foot down the waterfront
along Blackwall Road to another mates place on the side of the Blackwall
Mountain to pick him up , here we decided as a bit of a " boys own type bash" ,
we'd leg it straight through the bush into Ettalong and onto the pub. The
ensuing beer sodden trek through the scrub was hilarious as we slipped and
slided over the mossy rocks and it also formed a stronger bond with our small
group of mates.
The following year we found ourselves again at my mates place on the side of
Blackwall Mountain and with memories of the year before we decided to repeat our
previous trek, and again the year after. We had a large group of friends so each
year as word spread the numbers would increase right up until around 1991 , when
we made memorial beer coolers and got them printed up - sold the lot ! - these
are now known as sacred items.
Then we all started having families , or getting divorced , moving away , the
march sometimes dwindled down to less than 10 marchers, sometimes people would
turn up from interstate out of the blue to march, knowing they could always find
someone on the waterfront around 11ish on Anzac Day. The rule was once you have
marched once , you had to return each year and there's a couple of us who have
missed only 2 or 3 marches , but I began to notice something else was happening
- it was getting bigger again, people were bringing their younger brothers and
football team mates , word was spreading , the old crew of just my mates were
beginning to be replaced with younger guys and mates of mates.
Last year saw over 40 marchers arrive at the waterfront at the end of McMasters
road and another 10 were waiting at the bottom of the mountain , all in fine
voice and with mischievous grins.
I now must apologise / explain our actions to the following locals, firstly I
must say this in no way disrespects Anzac day or our servicemen killed in action
- a lot of us attend the dawn service earlier in the day, If anything it's a
tribute to Aussie mateship, something our Anzacs were known for.
Sorry to the people who own the flag pole along the waterfront that we stop at
and have a minutes silence each year as we go past, I'm sure it looks scary as
we roll up but then again you guys have flown it every year for the last 27
years - thanks !
Sorry to residents of the caravan park in Ettalong who look up into the bush at
Blackwall Mountain and wonder who the hell sits up there in a cave and sings
beer drinking songs for 2 hours each year !
Sorry for minor traffic disruptions along Blackwall Road and Maitland Bay Drive
between 12pm and 2pm every Anzac Day , just blow your horn at the muddy, drunk
person , wave and move along - do not stop your vehicle !
Sorry to all the kids on Ettalong Oval over the years whose footballs were "
borrowed " by us for a quick game of footy while en route to the pub - nah you
guys loved it !
Sorry to Ettalong Hotel for coming to your pub each year covered in mud and
blood and slightly pre-soaked, thanks to the wise doormen who politely directed
some of the more bedraggled ones around the " back way "
This year will be year 27 , a long time since we originally sat in the cave and
thought it would be great to do this every year , it's our our little home grown
tradition that brings you back to earth each year as you go over the same paths
in the bush , it's become more than just a beer with the boys and it has already
outlived some of it's original participants , I can't see it ending for quite
sometime
Bushwalks
I took another hike up to the Basalt Railways site last
weekend with my brother John , he was keen on checking it out and I wanted to
find a particular feature I'd seen in some old photos. We hiked in and headed
all the way down the the top of the crusher incline and I bit my tongue and
again headed down that bastard steep slope to the bottom workings, the lantana
down here is ridiculously thick and you cannot get through it in some places.
We wanted to check out the largest of the trestle bridges but the valley it sat
in is totally overgrown , you can still see the ramps of earth and concrete
retaining walls , but little else.
We headed up the creek here and found a small dam that supplied water to the
power plant and tried to get through to the other side but again too thick and
some nasty leaches changed our minds, also knowing we had to get back up that
slope we needed some reserve energy so we headed back regretfully - next mission
we will enter the site from a different more direct route.
On the way out we found spoils from a 1950's bottle dump at the edge of the tip
entrance and had a bit of a scratch around , found some nice little old medicine
type bottles , old marbles and a silver chain.
Bro is keen on joining the next mission , that's good he can clear the spider
webs and go in front next time.
We never found the strange semi circular stone wall that I'd seen in the old
photos either so that will warrant another hike !
F3 Blues
Another couple of weeks of commuting to Manly via the dreaded F3, it doesn't
seem to matter how early we leave - the traffic will still come to a complete
standstill when the 3 lanes merge into 2 at various point along the way.
Looks like the roadworks are nearing completion, I reckon they will finish
exactly 1 day after we finish our job in Manly ! We are painting the outside of a large tower of luxury apartments (Ting Hao
apartments) right in the middle of the spit part of town just near the
International College
of Management, evidently there will be filming scenes from the
coming Wonder Woman movie in this grand old building ( not sure what it was once
before ) Let's hope the wind blows
Megan Gale
off course and onto our balcony , then again maybe we don't need anymore
distractions, it's hard enough staying focused at 8 storeys above ground when
there are a constant stream of secretary students, nursing students and tourists
in bikinis wandering below us !
* Old photos taken a couple of years ago a bit dark sorry
Finally
Nine months after spending 1.3 million on the new pedestrian footbridge at Woy
Woy , Gosford Council
has signposted it with the chosen name "The Spike Milligan Footbridge"
Citizens are required to walk backwards across the bridge and be in possession
of a rubber chicken at all times.
The Woy Woy Peninsula and
surrounding areas including: Ettalong , Umina , Blackwall Booker
Bay , Orange Grove , Pearl Beach , Patonga , Daleys Point , Empire Bay
St Hueberts
Island , Rileys Island , Pelican Island , Koolewong
New South Wales , The Central Coast , Australia
