Every week it tempts me , the window display at
Stuff 4 Blokes
in the main street of Woy Woy , there's all those models of cars , lot's of
aussie ones and some nice military stuff like tanks and planes. I used to build
those plastic model kits when I was young and paint them all up - good honest
fun ! These die cast models at the shop are extra tempting with their accurate
detail and the fact you can buy a model of a car you once drove - I'll get a
Monaro one day ... I say to myself as I gaze in the window every week
after extracting my pay from the ATM across the street. Then a few weeks ago
they set up a display of movie and TV cars like the Batmobile , the car from The
Dukes of Hazzard and the Interceptor from Mad Max - that done it !
I now own a replica of the Interceptor , one of my favourite cars from my
favourite movie series ( except Mad Max 3 which sucked badly ). There's
something about us Mad Max
fans , we all seem to be around 40 ish , male and saw the original movie at the
theatre , the movies were huge all around the world grossing over 100 million
for the first movie.
Fans meet worldwide and get dressed up and go on runs with replica cars in Japan
and the USA , there are literally hundreds of Interceptor replica Fords
driving the streets around the world.
Before I left the shop we had to open the box and inspect the car ( the owner
was aching to have a look as well ! ) " Yes it has the supercharger belt
connected " he assured me ..... ahh big kids !
Bushwalks
Last couple of weekends I've been doing some short bushwalks checking out
some stuff I've seen on Google Earth , the current local images have been
updated and are about 2 - 3 years old from my estimations. These new images are
a vast improvement on the old lot , much clearer and more colourful , also
because they were taken during the drought you can see more of the landscape
because there is less vegetation , I've spotted many tracks that were long
forgotten that have come visible in the new images and I shall be checking them
out.
Last week I headed up to the old quarry on Woy Woy Road and walked down to the
top of Woy Woy Tunnel checking out some sidetracks , not much to see and it was
hot so I decided not to stray off track into the scrub - just a recon mission
basically , but I will go back and try and find the part of the hill where Frost
and his bullock team set up a cable to winch carts of beer to the top pub during the construction of Woy Woy Tunnel and find the
waterhole that he made to water the stock at the top of the hill , my mum
discovered this during a survey in the 70's and has some fuzzy old pics.
I also sussed out a polluted creek that runs from the quarry site - you can see
it's path of destruction clearly on Google Earth as it runs through the bush
into the old abbatior site at South Woy Woy , the water seems nutrient rich and
stinks , causing the edges of the creek to become a dirty red colour , from
Google Earth it looks like pipes coming from the current quarry site further up
are draining into the top half of the old quarry ponds , there are a couple of
houses up there as well - to me it looks like that these pipes are septic and
waste water run off from this site sneakily running off into the bush ...
This weekend passed I went to the end of Waterview St. and walked up towards the
old Woy Woy rail wharf through what was once called Woy Woy Park , before the
rail link this was the main wharf for Woy Woy town and steamships used to
offload there and at wharves all along the waterfront here.
I found the remains of one old wharf and what seems to be the remains of 2 lime
burning cones in the mangroves , 2 circular masses of seashells that seemed to
be charred from the burning process that made lime for the building industry in
the 1800's.
Recent heavy rain had uncovered and old bottle of hair tonic called " Spruso -
spruce up your hair .. " - it seems to be from the 50's - 60's from it's metal
screw top lid and the black plastic comb laying next to it.
On the way out it took a different route and found what seemed to be a dead
Kookaburra in the middle of the track huddled under a tree fern sheltering from
the hot afternoon sun , I gave it a nudge with my shoe and kept walking when it
suddenly moved , I spun around to have another look and the poor thing was alive
- just. It must have been blown out of the nest during heavy rain on Friday and
had spent a day or 2 on the ground it seems , it's legs seemed to be lifeless
but he gave me a good bite to let me know he wasn't quite done for yet, so I
wrapped him up in my shirt and headed home.
Once home I stuck him in a washing basket in the cool shade and tried to get
some water into him - I think he got a couple of gulps down before I stuck a
towel over the top of the basket and let him rest up , I called the local
WIRES
folk , who came within an hour and picked him up - good service on a Sunday -
onya WIRES and Kathy !
Barrett gets ass whooping from locals A recent letter to the Editor at the
Central Coast Express
Advocate from local small time author
Bob Barrett
urging us Peninsula " peasants " to stay way from his home town of Terrigal so
he can " sip latte in peace " drew a mass response to the paper , most gave him
shit over the poorly written letter, another lark suggested cutting off his only
way out of town by suggesting a similar " gating " tactic at Pearl Beach.
I've read a couple of Barretts' books mainly because my mate raved about him but
I couldn't get into them or Les Norton so ended up using them for table
levellers at parties.
Now Barrett used to promote himself as the ordinary man's author but it now
seems he's made enough cash to alienate the people who paid for his block of
land at Terrigal.
A couple of dickheads have published harsh comments about us Woy Woy folk before
, one being Peter Hindmarsh , usually the same drivel about " Mt Druitt by the
Sea " , so Barretts' rant was nothing new or special or funny or smart.
If you want to make a comment about something based on a broad generalisation
then let me jump on the boat too please. Terrigal - Some call it a " poor man's Double Bay " but I would
disagree , Double Bay has real class , real money and it's own style , Terrigal
reminds me of a poor cousin to Manly sans historic buildings , basically with no
parking and the overpopulation on the weekends it's one small clusterfuck.
The people who sit in the cafes there annoy me as well , they live in million
dollar houses with matching Smeg appliances , but are unable to rustle up a damn
bacon n egg sandwich and a cup of coffee , prefer to eat in public and sit next
to a main road with exhaust fumes so people can look at them ...
Because that's what Terrigal is , it's a " look at me " town , I've nearly been
run over on the crossing there by some woman looking at her reflection in the
shop windows while driving her X-5 BMW thats has never seen dirt or 4WD mode.
Barrett must have it wrong because there's nothing in Terrigal that us Peninsula
folk would really be bothered going there for , the shops are dearer , the
beaches more crowded - not much at all really. Pearl Beach - is a ghost town near Woy Woy , it has a few aged
permanent residents , most of the houses are empty holiday homes owned by the
well to do from Sydney.
On the weekends and during school holidays the town assumes a full population ,
the residents seem oblivious to road rules and wander in the middle of the
street like hoardes of zombies ( sunburnt ones ) , if you approach a group of
these zombies at any speed above 30 km/ph or if you have an unusually loud
exhaust you will get " The Pearl Beach Stare " as they sneer and stumble to the
side of the road , clutching their young like you are an eagle about to swoop
on them.
A favourite pastime of mine is to watch the Sydney people tackling the infamous
shore dump on the beach , they will attempt to launch a variety of surfcraft
into the water only to have it upturned , sank and unceremoniously delivered
back to the beach full of sand !
That was fun , I feel better ! , but really , gating your suburb to keep
undesirables out hasn't worked in Woy Woy since the 1920's when the owner of
Bull's Farm decided to put a gate across Woy Woy Road where it crossed his
property at the base of Bull's Hill , the first car that arrived was bailed up
and the guy had to walk into Woy Woy , only to return with the local copper.
Mr. Bull was berated by the constable , but was happy that his protest was now
officially registered and the gate was removed !
I found this
website
about a block of flats in St Kilda , Melbourne , on first seeing the photo of it
I did a double take as it looked familiar and read on. Evidently the building
was designed by a semi famous architect fella by the name of Mewton in 1936 and
was considered arty for it's time , also the name of the building is Woy Woy -
but they are unable to find the link to this town here on the coast , maybe this
Mewton fella built the flats at Umina with funds from the Melbourne project.
The flats I refer to are on the corner of the Esplanade at Umina at the end of Barranjoey Avenue , have a read of the site and check the
pics
and see if you agree with me ...
I emailed the real estate agent in charge of the place but they were unable to
help and I emailed The St Kilda Historical Society but no reply as of yet , so
sports fans it looks like it's up to us to solve this one ......
Webgreetings To Mike Rubbo and
hi to his mate
Eric Shackle
, thanks for the comments ( laconic eh I like it lol ) , check out Mikes new
concept site - Family Art Stories , and hi to
Spike
and the other Mike ( cheers for the map )
The origin of weblog Before Blogspot and
Wordpress etc people used to like to keep a log of their
lives and updates on their own websitesand other people used to like reading them and then suddenly it was popular
to do both and so these easy to set up hosted blogs were born I have been
tempted to utilise one of these sites basically cos I'm usually lazy sometimes ,
but I will persist in using my own sites for my stuff in case they go broke or
get hacked. So that why this blog is different to the usual blogs - it's old school but
I've stolen a few ideas from the current new style blogs - if you ever want to
comment here , you will have to join the forums and leave a post in the
new thread for my blog, it doesn't take long to sign up and it's worth a look around at the many
posts so far on the rest of the site , you can still email me as well ...
Dream come true ( kind of ) Long ago when my dad used to come home from work he'd slap down on the table
a copy of the Daily Mirror and I'd grab it and quickly flick to the page with
Benier's
daily cartoon on it to find " the little man " - a small figure he used to place
in every cartoon. We used to go on family beach days to Patonga Creek and I would sail the
tiny wooden sail boat my grandfather had made me up and down the creek , Benier
the cartoonist lived right opposite where we were at the beach and we sometimes
saw him walking his dog , he always wore his trademark French beret. Mum bought me a book on cartooning and encouraged me to draw which I liked
and Dad sent me to Little Athletics which I hated , some years later my Dad
formed the Peninsula Swans AFL Club and one of his coup's was getting the
political cartoonist Larry Pickering to play for the club as well as affiliating
the club with the Sydney Swans when the infamous Dr Jeffrey Edelstein owned
them. Larry Pickering
was famous for those calendars that featured all the pollies that year naked
with out of proportion genitals and I met him several times , he even done some
cartoons about the club , he and Dad designed the current Swans logo. I ended up playing AFL for a couple of years and recruited lots of my mates
who loved the game so much that the club grew rapidly and some of those guys
brothers and mates are still playing or involved today, my brother has
been President of the club up until this year , but he's still coaching for
them.
Anyway back to cartooning which has always been an attraction from reading early
Sunday paper cartoons to stuff like Battle and Commando when I was older then I
bought a weekly sci-fi comic called 2000 AD for about 2 years.
I was always drawing but I could never put a cartoon together or think of a
character and I lost all interest once I was a teenager and discovered girls and
surfing , the last cartoon I followed was
Captain Goodvibes
from the old Tracks surf magazine ....
2003 and I had kind of mastered graphics on my computer had taught myself html
and all the stuff needed to make a website like making the banners , sizing
photo's etc and was experimenting with adding text to pictures when I realised I
could quickly make cartoons with pictures I created. A sudden burst of inspiration and I had 3 episodes of a cartoon on a friends
website followed by a couple more , I got a great response and continual email
asking for more episodes , but my time was now taken up with personal matters
and I went offline for 2 years. Last year the editor of a new alternative type
magazine emailed me asking if they could use my cartoon in their publication ,
of course I agreed and it has now appeared in 4 issues and it goes all over
Australia and the world. So when I walk into the local newsagent now and see that magazine on the
shelf it tickles me pink - a dream come true , funny thing is I can't tell you
what the cartoon is or the magazine due to the content I use ( and abuse ) in
the cartoon and the magazine's possible prosecution for using copyrighted
content ( hehe ) so I'll just say it comes wrapped in plastic but it's not in a
porn magazine ....... and it shocked my mum
( sorry mum lol )
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
