Anderson Boat Hire Hi to Rob from Anderson Boatshed who sent me the URL to
www.andersonsmarina.com.au
Nice little history page on the site about the marina ,
worth a looksee folks
Masonic Hall sold Recently the Masonic building in Railway St was sold
for an estimated 1 million dollarsto a large hotel developer. Rumours that it could be knocked
down and Deepwater Plaza expanded have been heard , should it be kept as a
Heritage item ? I thought it would have been on the list.
The hall was built in 1926 with funds from a benefactor named Albert S Josephson
on land donated by Fred and Elizabeth Couche , members numbers were recorded as
20 in 1922 , 151 in 1964 and 130 in 1969
Before the hall they used to travel by boat to Gosford , every time the boat
would run into a sandbar on the return night time journey , a new boatsman was
hired by the nickname of " Hutch " , he didn't know the channels but landed the
party safely home that night and was commended by all.
" Hutch " was a returned soldier from WW1 and went on to become a " Rat from
Tobruk " after the war he was the official Legacy contact for the area looking
after some 30 war widows and their families.
Cyber purchases Just picked up two more cyber properties recently
www.woy-woy.info and
www.ettalong.net I don't have anything on them yet and probably won't do
anything but sit on them until they become worth gazillions of dollars and I can
ride off into the sunset... something like that anyway
I noticed
www.blackwall.com is now worth about 25 grand , I could have
bought that years ago dammit !
Thanks Mike For those pics , I'm doing something with them for next
month....
Shakespeare of Blackwall
Whilst on a recent trek over Blackwall Mountain I found some
old carvings done in 1921 by 2 locals , after a bit of guesswork I figured in
was either Jack Shackelton or something similar and had a quick peek in the
index of Good Old Woy Woy and bingo we get the name James William Shakespeare "
pioneer truck owner of Blackwall Hill " Jack owned Portion 94 which comprised of
the area overlooking Orange Grove on the side of Blackwall Mountain, he built
all the roads on the mountain here with the help of his daughter Belle, who was
said to be " as strong as a lion "
She also carted water to their hillside home from the flats at Blackwall and
helped look after her fathers beehives - when I lived at Booker Bay in the early
90's my neighbour told me that the bees he kept in his yard were descendants of
those original bees captured from a leftover wild hive on the mountain.
James or Jack as the carving says, maybe that was his nickname, died in 1941
aged 74
The other initials are W.M 1921, so again I go to the index of Good Old Woy Woy
and I get a few matches but I figure it could be no other man than William
Monkhouse, owner of a small but popular boarding house near the little Church of
England at Blackwall.
William loved Woy Woy and was holder of the record for the largest jewfish
caught on the Brisbane Water for the time, another local Harry Frater hooked and
caught a massive tailer weighing 36 pounds, when he landed the fish it had a
.303 bullet hole in it, men often shot at fish as they passed under the rail
bridge at Woy Woy ! Going by the first carving where poor old Jack nearly runs
out of rock face to carve his large surname, a wiley William Monkhouse was just
happy with his initials one feels. And on the theme of 1920'2 rock carvings and with the hint of
Egypt in the air, I note that people at this time were good at carving into
either wood or rock, as a male you would have to know these skills in order to
get work at some stage in their lives, on the other side of the bay lay the
mysterious
Kariong carvings
said to be done in the 1920's, some say they are real, but I know Woy Woy and I
reckon they are one of this nation's oldest practical jokes........
Walk like an Egyptian Hi to Gihan and Darren from
Mysticology.com
- Unique Imported New Age & Egyptian Gifts and Services. Thanks for the comments
and welcome to Woy Woy, please check their snazzy looking website with the
lavish use of the papyrus
font :)
Bit nipply Winter has come early with record low temperatures for the
month, the coldest April in 25 years they are saying , not good this early in !
State of Origin My mate Mick
has just released his new State of Origin theme song, it's a pisser ....I hope
the TV mobs pick it up as an anthem, ah and look out for the reference to Woy
Woy - onya Mick !
Ettalong summer of 71 As summer rapidly disappears and the sun gets that golden winter tinge , I
think back to warmer, nicer times......
Summer in Ettalong, when I was a kid was truly magical, the heat seemed to last
for months ( it probably did ), school holidays seemed to last months as well,
some days it was so hot we'd just lay on the cool concrete on the front porch
like baking lizards.
A trip to the beach with my parents involved packing us 4 kids into the old
Holden EK station wagon and heading off to Ettalong for the day, we usually went
to Bullions Wharf and camped out on the small beach there.
Bullions Wharf or now just plain old Ettalong Wharf used to have a large
boatshed built over it, a tackle shop, boat repair area and slipway - it was
quite fascinating to me as a kid.
A few times when we were at the beach they would bring a salvaged boat to the
wharf to be dragged out of the water, the boat was dragged under water until it
was near the wharf, then hooked up to a small tractor with caterpillar tracks
which then hauled the boat up onto the sand, it was always quite a spectacle and
a crowd would always gather to see what was about to be brought up from Davy
Jones' locker.
One time while everyone was waist deep in water watching the tractor, someone
spotted a pod of sea snakes just offshore, the water was quickly evacuated !
Once all us kids were a nice shade of lobster red, we'd head off home via the
nearest corner store to buy a Splice ice cream to cool our salty throats.
Night time around Christmas and we'd sometimes go up to the top of Blackwall
Mountain to watch the sunset from the lookout, back then you could drive all the
way to the top and use the picnic area made by the local Rotary mob, at night it
was all lit up with lights and looked like a fairyland.
Later on we would go down into Ettalong and walk along the main street towards
Bullions Wharf, on the strip here it was set up like a mini carnival, some
people had stalls in their front yards with amusement machines, the local
Ambulance station had a house where they set up one of those old wooden horse
race table machines that you could bet on, I used to love watching the brightly
painted horses whizzing around the oval track.
As time went by and the owners of those houses changed hands, the mini golf
course closed down, and the night time carnival tradition died off, occasionally
up until the 80's one local there still had a yard full of amusement machines
and open it up to the public.
It was a time when when you could still leave your back door open , I'm glad
I was there.
Actually , no you couldn't ... That reminds me of a story my Dad told me once, when he and Mum had just
moved into the area.
Dad was up late one night watching cricket and noticed a bang at the back door,
he got up to investigate and saw someone take off down the side of the house.
Evidently this person was trying to break into our house and was slowy
chiselling the back door lock by striking the timber every time a ball was
bowled on TV, he was using the sound of the ball hitting the bat to mask the
sound of the chisel, it was all working to plan until the batsman missed a bowl
and Dad heard the bang at the back door, lucky for him he never made it inside -
my father would have kicked the shit out of him !
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
