Woy Woy Walkies

2006-10-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

WAITING FOR AN UPDATE?

The next walkies I did start here and my most recent walks are here.

This site is the 2005 archives.

Walk #58 - Astronauts

2006-01-23T14:02:00.000-08:00

(Walked 10th of September 2005)

My notes tell me there was a "clearing sky" and "morning birds sounds, white roses with beautiful scent, muggy ... plenty of sprinklers on ... dogs laying in shade not barking".

I've also noted that there are "more birds sounds in 70s streets due to native trees fashionable in 70s, gums & paperbarks mainly".

Most of the streets I walked were named after astronauts. Lovell (Gemini 7 & 12 in 1965 & 66, Apollo 13 in 1970), Glenn (Friendship 7 in 1962, Discovery in 1998), Carpenter (Friendship 7 & Aurora 7 in 1962) and Shepard (Freedom 7 in 1961, Apollo 14 in 1971).

Next post & its photos

Walk #57

2006-01-23T13:41:00.000-08:00

(Walked 9th of September 2005)

#57 is lost but my notes indicate I got the bus down to Cowper Road again (near the Mt Ettalong end of the beach), had a pastie from the shop and the architecture was mostly seventies and eighties.

There was also "distant clunk and roar of a bulldozer at Ettalong, the heavy scent of a jasmine climber, rottweiler on a balcony." I remember the rotty. It gave one bark and stared at me stolidly in the way of rottweilers. Lovely dogs but they don't come across as terribly bright.

There were palms, pencil pines, frangipanis, banksias, tea trees and Geraldton wax bushes and lorikeets twittering in a flowering gum.

I remember the guy yapping into a mobile phone and dragging a choking malamute along. It was hot and a bit muggy by then. Not ideal weather for walking a malamute. It was a very sandy area too. Dead grass on verges was going bald. A couple of streets further there was a birthday party with a rather strine country singer on the stereo and a lot of whooping from the partiers.

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Leviathan

2006-01-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted 2005)

This week I’ve started in on Leviathan: the unauthorised biography of Sydney. Been meaning to read it for a while. Done by John Birmingham so it’s very readable. Birmingham also did He Died With A Felafel In His Hand which is so funny my boss at the time went purple and couldn’t speak.

Excerpt from Leviathan about a bunch of violent nutters in the eighties, including a deserving case who comes to a sticky end:

[A tiny fascist political party] unexpectedly found itself called upon to explain its position. The party’s slack-jawed mouthpiece denied they were in any way racist. [They] didn’t believe in the superiority of one race over another. [They] simply believed that the Anglo-Celtic culture of Australia should not be endangered. As more people noted what they were saying … the party’s internal bulletin, announced that the time had come for taking it to the streets.

Student unions noted an escalating number of bashings of Asian students after dark, both on campus and in the clutch of inner city suburbs around the neo-Nazis’ favourite watering holes. There was a shift not just in the frequency of political violence, but also in its intensity and focus. The targets began to change. The party bulletin [] featured a regular [column] in which critics of the party would find their name, phone number and address published with an invitation to the ‘curious and adventurous’ to dish out a little nationalist justice. Journalists such as Gerard Henderson, Andrew Olle and Adele Horin who covered the immigration debate or related topics in an unsatisfactory manner began to receive phone calls and death threats late at night. Academics and unionists found their car tyres slashed and graffiti daubed on their houses. Greenpeace and Community Aid Abroad shops were broken into and looted.

Violent overthrow of the dominant paradigm doesn’t come cheap, however, so in early 1984 the party leadership cooked up a scam to rip off the GIO and raise money to buy all the firebombs, balaclavas and nail-studded clubs they would need to make people understand the righteousness of their cause. A woman who rented a room at [the party's] headquarters came home one day to find the place ransacked, her jewellery gone and party fuhrer [] shaking his head

...

[The party] began working its way down the enemies list, widening their attacks from vulnerable students and the occasional journalist to gays, lesbians, Aboriginal, peace and anti-apartheid groups, academics, liberal congregations such as the Pitt Street Uniting Church, the Anti-discrimination Board, union activists and, somewhat recklessly, a couple of Special Branch cops who had been assigned to their case. Terrorising the wives and families of heavily armed secret policemen was not the Nazis' first step on the happy staircase to success. After [they] raided the meeting of a gay migration lobby group the hammer came down.

Having suffered through months of harassment the gays were ready for a fight. Their resistance seemed to unnerve the storm troopers and a handful of hysterical pansies and angry dykes proceeded to bitch slap them out of the room. Special Branch quickly obtained a search warrant and charged over to a house in Petersham used as an alternative headquarters by [the party]. They found a tape recording and photographs of the raid. Most of the those who took part were arrested and charged. The cases were heard in Glebe local court and attended by observers from a resistance group called Community Alert Against Racism and Violence.

‘It was unbelievably pathetic,’ said CAARAV’s Betty Hounslow. ‘Shane Rosier, one of their big men, was just this really pathetic bloke in his late forties who was, you know, a bit chubby. He wore these brown trousers that kept riding up the back and an old yukko-Iooking brown cardigan. They found a lot of weapons in his house… coshs, chains, and studded balls. And his story to the magistrate was that the weapons were part of his collection. He’d always been interested in weapons, he said. His grandfather was a famous gun collector. He and his dad had always wanted to have a gun collection just like old Granddad’s, but they’d never had enough money to collect guns so they had to collect cheaper, working-class weapons. And this was why he had all these things. He said the tape of the raid was left on his doorstep one morning. Like a little abandoned baby.’

The pressure told and the Nazis turned on each other as deeply ‘repressed suspicions and rivalries burst through to the surface. Everybody seemed to accuse everyone else of being police spies and sexual deviants. The final slide into ignoble collapse was marked by the gunshot murder of Wayne ‘Bovver’ Smith in [the party's] headquarters at Tempe a few years later. It was an almost perfect example of the hapless farce which so often attended the adventures of Sydney’s neo-Nazi elite in the 1980s. Bovver, twenty-five years old and already weighing 108 kilos thanks to the three or four stubbies of beer he’d consume for breakfast each morning, was shot eight times with a sawn-off .22 rifle by Perry Whitehouse, ten years his senior but less than half his size, during a drunken, confused and basically pointless argument. When Whitehouse blew him away, Bovver was wearing a singlet bearing the message: Say No To The New Gun Control Laws.

Delicious.

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Veranda porn

2006-01-23T13:17:00.000-08:00

A snippet from my current reading.

Our move next to Squid’s place came about in an odd way. It happened that in the previous year my grandmother had died, leaving my grandfather living alone in his old wooden house on the cliffs–the place in which my mother had lived as a girl. It was just before Christmas 1928 that Grandfather became peculiar.

I should perhaps qualify this. To me Grandfather McDonald had seemed a little peculiar for as long as I could remember. He had for years called himself a Tolstoyan. I realize now that he must have been a Tolystoyan with variations of his own. For instance, although he was a vegetarian he would eat no apples because this was forbidden in the book of Genesis. A photograph of Tolstoy in the old house could almost have passed as Grandfather, with the same beard and stern, determined expression.

Anyway, when he became peculiar my mother had to go back and forth to “Thermopylae” to clean the place and cook him an occasional meal. He usually muttered and growled at her while she worked, or else sat out on the veranda to watch for passing ships–he had been an old Port Phillip pilot and before that a master in sail.

Just under the house he had a collection of nautical odds and ends, and from this he had resurrected the wheel of the Arabella, a schooner wrecked years before somewhere off the Victorian coast. He fixed this to the veranda rail and standing there would steer the house towards the Heads, muttering and cursing and glaring at the horizon.

This of course didn’t hurt anyone, and no one minded when he fitted the veranda with navigation lights and a binnacle. Complaints from Peters and other neighbours only began when he found a megaphone and used it to roar and blaspheme at ships out in the channel.

It was decided I would sleep under Grandfather’s window on the north veranda, which was the side of the house least exposed to the weather. Even though thick tea-tree protected it, there were nights when the canvas blinds flapped wildly and the roar of waves sounded so close that I would find myself dreaming we were out a sea. These were the nights Grandfather was likely to get up and take the helm. Once or twice on windy moonlit nights I saw him, beard and hair blowing, pyjamas clinging about him, the ghost of a captain on a ghostly ship. The only way to handle him then was for my father to run outside crying, “Ready to take over, sir.” Then Grandfather would relinquish the wheel and allow my mother to lead him back to bed.

But these nights weren’t frequent. Usually the Bay was calm and from my bed I could hear the lapping of waves on the beach at the base of the cliffs. Sometimes on these still nights I could hear through the thin wall Grandfather debating Darwinism with himself, taking first one side and then the other. Darwin always lost.

Veranda porn from one of my very favourite books. All The Green Year by D.E. Charlwood. I'd post the whole book for your reading pleasure but copyright doesn't run out until 70 years* after the author's death and it appears he ain't even dead yet.

* It's really 50 years but we got shafted last year in the American-Australian trade deal and now George Bush dictates copyright law on Australia authors. Thanks a lot, weasel.

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Walk #55 - Knob

2006-01-22T23:27:00.000-08:00

(Walked 5th of September 2005)

Back to Ettalong on this one. My notes say some fancy bit of the roof at the Ettalong Markets had come off and I remember it was glowing a gale the day before.

(Big version)

The caption on this photo at Flickr says: "Stood there for yonks waiting for a clear shot. It was one of those days for traffic.

The Booker Bay General Store at 72 Booker Bay Road is in my history list as built circa 1918. The house on the back of the shop is lived in, presumably by the current owners.

King's Store at 78 Booker Bay Road is down as circa 1920. The house at the back is lived in and the shop itself is now part of the house by the look of it.

Booker Bay is one of the original villages on the Peninsula before it filled up with houses. You can see the village still in the number of pre-war houses around the bay."

Found a couple of other old buildings from my hist list. The old dairy at No108 Booker Bay Road is gone. "House, Sam Murray, 1 Bilba Avenue ... c.1910" was still there by the look of it. There was a garage obscuring it but I could see a rusty green tin roof with the right pitch and size for 1910.

The graveyard at "42-50 Bogan Road and 159/161 Booker Bay Road" is long gone but the two big old pines at its entrance are still there. You can see them clearly in this (large) photo.

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Walk #54 - Sprogs & Dogs

2006-01-22T23:15:00.000-08:00

(Walked 3rd of September 2005)

This one I did on a Saturday and it was pretty noisy. Everyone was out and about with their pets and their kids and their boats and there was a footy match in progress at the oval nearby. There's nothing else in my notes except the drawing below.

No53 Brick Wharf Road. Which I now suspect is one of the old boarding houses from the Federation period (circa 1890 - circa 1915).

(Big version)

No idea of the age or original purpose of this building. Looks like it was a house and it might be Federation. So far I've found no old photos and no mention of it in the library.

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Walk #52 - Dark & Windy

2006-01-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

(Walked 31st of August 2005)

(Original posts from #48 - 59 lost and I'm re-writing from my notebook.)

"Gusty as hell," my notebook says, "Leaves, grit, DOT forced against side of car." The azaleas were out "full throttle this time", as well as bright orange daisies and the tiny white flowers of a prostrate tea tree. I remember there was also a lot of orange jessamine and roses and several front gardens full of palms. There were also jonquils, according to my notebook, and I'm not a big fan of them. They look okay but they smell like shit.

I went up to the end of Australia Avenue and crossed the footbridge over some swampy ground. There was a small park that seemed to be entirely reeds and a sign saying 'Kahibah Lagoon and Wetland'. There were a few cigarette butts and choc-milk cartoons on a narrow path into the reeds so I'd say it's used as a teenage hang-out.

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Walk #51 - Plateau

2006-01-22T22:56:00.000-08:00

I remember this one. Another warm winter day and I was sweating like a nervous flier but the time I got to the top. Got a couple of great photos though.

(Bigger version)

More photos here
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Walk #50

2006-01-22T22:29:00.000-08:00

(Walked 26th of August 2005)

(Original posts from #48 - 59 lost and I'm re-writing from my notebook.)

My notes say "couple of fat geese, mud, jungles, berserk dogs". Don't remember the berserk dogs (there's been so many) but I remember the geese and mud and jungles.

I got the Cowper Road bus and got off at Neera Road. Along the creek there the tide was out and I could see the mud flats with geese and native waterfowl scratching about on them. There were a couple of houses whose owners appear to've got into mung beans in the seventies and planted palms and monsteria and strangle vines in their backyards.

I remember it was a warm day and the sun was out. Neera Road was flat but then I went up Mountain Ash Way it was a shit as hell. It was the first or one of the first steep I did and I remember stopping in the shade half a dozen times on the way up. It was hard yakka but I got to the top without a block-and-tackle and a team of navies and was much pleased.

My notes say I did another eight streets but I don't remember the rest of the walk.

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Walk #49

2006-01-22T22:04:00.000-08:00

(Walked 23rd of August 2005)

(Original posts from #48 - 59 lost and I'm re-writing from my notebook.)

My notes say it was bloody nippy again but I wore powerful underwear and a scarf. There were plenty of 40s and 70s houses and one with a very steep-pitched roof and dormer windows. A very European look. There were dozens of dogs and cats and Dear Old Things parked out in the sun warming themselves over. There was a budding cherry blossom tree and a couple of frangipanis putting out a few leaves in the sun.

It appears that I walked all the way across the Peninsula from Lens Avenue (near the ridge) to Ettalong. Not as long a walk as The Long March but not short either. My notes say: "Sat at foreshore watching waves and ferry. Half Tide Rocks just visible. Big wet dog." Okay, now I remember. That dog brought me a stick and I threw it for him a few times then he settled down on my feet and ate the stick with every sign of enjoyment.

After that it looks like I walked back to Springwood Street and caught the bus home from the bowling club. If I remember right the wind got up and whispered pleasantly through the mesh of the bus-stop.

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Walk #48

2006-01-22T21:35:00.000-08:00

(Walked 22nd of August 2005)

(Original posts from #48 - 59 lost and I'm re-writing from my notebook.)

There were rainclouds out to sea and a stiff breeze as I set out. The wind in the gums and palms and banksias on Adelaide Avenue made a beautiful sound.

There were a lot of Federation rooflines under renovations and additions amd several sixties houses. The clouds came on shore and the wind started to gust. There was the roar of the bus as it went past and a big saw somewhere that sounded like the veggie-saurus from Jurassic Park.

In another street pines roared softly and there was a great swirl of leaves. It was overcast by now and the wind was getting cold. Iluka Lagoon was not visible and there was a nice forties house on the corner of Calypta and Kallaroo Roads.

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God Of Walkers

2006-01-22T21:26:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted 20th of August 2005)

We walk-every-street walkers have a god and I just found out.

"Phyllis Pearsall was a remarkable woman. Born in 1906 she had already lived a rather bohemian life as a writer, painter and traveler when in 1935 she got lost in London while using a 20 year old street map which was at the time the most recent available. Working from a bedsit in Horseferry Road (in SW1!) and with the aid of James Duncan - a draughtsman borrowed from her father, a Hungarian mapmaker, she began to catalogue the 23,000 streets that featured in the first edition. Working eighteen hour days she walked a total of 3,000 miles in compiling it."

Phyllis Pearsall.

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Walk #47 - Flowers For The Dead

2006-01-22T20:54:00.000-08:00

(Walked 19th of August 2005)

Warmer than it looked today. It was overcast when I got up and it’s still overcast now. Bit of wind too. But by the time I got to Rip Bridge I was sweating like a clingwrapped pig *.

(Big version) St Luke's.

My feet are throbbing like buggery too but it was a good long walk and one I’ve been looking forward to for a while.

Went down Yob Street, another long straight road, then round the back of the Mountain and up onto the bridge for some photos. I walked to the start of the walk and when I add that onto the walk itself it’s…Bloody hell, it’s 13.3 kilometres (8.26 miles). That’s more than the Long March! No wonder my feet hurt.

(Big version) St Luke's portico.

Started near St. Luke’s. It’s an environment centre now but it was a church and the outside still looks the same, minus the cross. A tiny white weatherboard church on a corner. Lovely. Only the interior’s been stripped. Couldn’t find a foundation stone but my research says it was built in 1904 and the plaque on it says “Built c. 1902 … Heritage Item No 119″. I ticked it off my list of Old Stuff to be photographed.

A couple of blocks before St. Luke’s I had ten years frightened off me by the world’s tiniest dog. Bloody chihuahua. The little bastard was lurking under a bush and exploded into a frenzy of yapping as I got level with it. I’d been wandering along in a bit of a doze and I leapt six feet. Bloody thing yipped like a squeaky toy and wouldn’t shut up. The owner apologised and said the dog gets the postie (mailman) every day. No wonder the postie looks so haggard.

Yob Street was in two halves as far as the oldest houses on it go. The first half had houses from the thirties and forties but nothing I could see before that. The second half, the Whatsit Street end, had dozens of pre-1920s houses as well as thirties forties. There were seventies houses along the length of it. There were a lot of rentals at the two ends. At the McMasters Road end there was a house with GGD (Garden Gnome Disease) then a house with crappy hip hop thumping out of it and they pretty much set the tone for Yob Street. Bit further down a couple of blokes in baggy shorts and fake bling were playing touch footy in their front yard. They fancied themselves as cool dudes with ‘tood. Too much Saturday Video.

Down around the middle of Yob Street there were quite a few rentals due for the chop. They were saggy-roofed and neglected and you could feel the eyes of real estate agent’s upon them. Let’s rip them down and put up some nice pricey units, you could hear them thinking, Cram 'em in and rake in the moola! There was also a bloody awful brick-over of a classic fifties house. Don’t try that at home, kids. But there were some nice revamps of forties and pre-1920s places there too.

Yob Street is not actually straight. It looks straight to the casual glance but there’s actually a tiny angle on it. Which means that when you get halfway down it you can suddenly see Patonga Ridge at the end. Yob Street runs right down to Umina Beach. You can’t see the beach until you get to it but you can see the ridge.

Anyways, it was a pleasant view to glance up at as I wandered along. Right down the Whatsit Street end of Yob there was a seventies house. Must’ve been very fash when it was new. Sprawling squat A-shaped house in beige brick with stripey cafè-style awnings and juliet balconies. Balconies on the ground floor. The seventies was definitely the decade style forgot.

By now I was starving. I could smell fish & chips cooking somewhere and it was half past twelve. Turned the corner onto Whatsit Street and trotted across to the kebab shop. Sat there at one of the tables on the footpath and sank my teeth into a hot, fresh chicken kebab. Yum.

As I chewed I stared at the pub on the corner. The bottle shop at the back was definitely fifties. Just look at that roofline. The pub itself I think is twenties. It got a revamp a couple of years ago. Re-tiling on the outside walls, new wooden and glass doors and wooden half walls with big windows opening above them. The half walls were in a wide aperture on the very corner of the pub and another one ten feet along down the side. They’re the old front bar and sports bar doorways. The curve on the very corner of the pub is twenties. I’d put money on it. And the veranda height says twenties too. There’s a restaurant on the side but that used to be the Post Office. Looks like it was a shop before that. On the 1st floor there was a gym and in the room next to that there was a line of washing strung across the room under two old brass candelabras.

After a good long masticate I washed my hands, got a drink and got on my way. I was only halfway through my walk.

Walked the last block of Yob Street and sat at the beach for a bit. No haze at all today and Barrenjoey Head looked close. Took a photo then headed off towards the Mountain. Went along a couple of short streets behind the pub. More scruffy rentals but also some well-kept houses. They were quiet enough at lunchtime but come tonight they’ll be getting the racket from the bands in the pub.

The road to the Mountain was very mixed. A lot of forties and seventies as usual and then plenty of eighties to now. There were some more of the scruffy rentals up near the Mountain but mostly it was owner-occupied houses and blocks of retireree units.

(Big version) Old shop opposite King's Store.

Near the Mountain there were three old shops. One of them was from the fifties but two of them were 1900 - 1920 I think. Can’t find them in my photocopied list of Old Stuff from the library. I did find two shops on the list though, at Nº 72 & Nº 78 Booker Bay Road. Locals know one of them as King’s Store. They’re listed as circa 1918 and circa 1920.

The road round the back of the Mountain was dark. The sky had lowered a bit and a couple of kookaburras decided it was dusk and started up their evening song. But then they spotted me coming along the road and flew off. Got a photo of one still on the branch though.

Across the road, against the side of the Mountain, there was a big bunch of flowers taped to a streetlight to mark a fatal road accident. Not surprised. It’s a busy road and the cars zoom down off the bridge like Lucifer’s behind them.

My feet were giving my hell by this time and I was pretty sweaty. Climbed up to the Governor Phillip Memorial again and had a nice sitdown. Gazed down into Fisherman’s Bay and across to Hardy’s and thought about icecream and flasks of icy cold drinks. The breeze around a couple of hours before was gone.

Had another look at the plinth with the maps on it. It was put there for the Bicentennial (1988) and shows where Governor Phillip and Captain Hunter landed when they explored Broken Bay in March 1788 and June 1789.

Took a photo of the maps of the plinth. Hope it turns out better than the last one. [UPDATE, January 2006: It did.]

Then it was out onto The Rip Bridge for some more photos.

(Big version) Fishermans Bay.

(Big version) Hardys Bay.

(Big version) Booker Bay.

(Big version) Booker Bay & Hardys.

It was about 3PM and the sun was a bit low in the sky. The water on the north-east side of the bridge was silver grey and the ridges behind Koolewong and Tascott were a soft dark green.

(Big version)

(Big version)

(Big version)

I was a bit pooped. I tottered off to the bus-stop. Didn’t have to wait long. Just long enough to notice the sign for Mullbong Street has been nicked again. Then the bus sprung round the corner and I flagged it down frantically. My feet wanted to go home and have a nice lie down.

* clingwrapped pig courtesy of Tony Squires, newspaper columnist & TV sports thingy. Back to where you were.

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Walk #46 - Pressed Tin

2006-01-22T20:43:00.000-08:00

(Walked 17th of August 2005)

When I got up this morning the sky was blue and the sun was already warm. It was almost hot on my walk. Saw a couple of people in tee shirts. I've worn a shirt for most of my walks this winter. Only needed a jacket a few times.

All the streets I've walked this last fortnight have been flat straight streets. All the same, all different.

All with the same amount of dogs, a few of them roaming the street and most of them barking ferociously at the slightest thing that moves. Cats perched on fences soaking up the sun. Lorikeets and honeyeaters nibbling at the flowers and magpies cawing and hopping about on the ground.

All with the same type of cars, the same mix of houses from the fifties to the seventies and a sprinkling of pre-twenties, eighties and noughties on a solid base of thirties and forties. All with the same fashions in gardens helping me date their houses.

But they only look the same at first glance. They all have little quirks and idiosyncrasies. Every now and then you stumble upon a purple house or a pink one like today. Or a new house being built with a strong stylistic influence from the fifties. Or a cat that’s so eager for a pat it leaves its food bowl and runs up to strangers. (For its troubles I gave the cat a double-handed ear massage. I think it expired from bliss.) Or pressed tin on the front of a sagging old rental house. Or some tiny unspoken war like houses opposite each other flying the flags of enemy footy (football) teams.

Such small delights make every single walk interesting and make even streets as quiet and dead as Woy Woy's come alive.

(Big version) Colorbond roof.

I noticed another pattern today as well. Maybe 10% of houses and units built in the last ten years have tiled roofs. The rest have Colorbond roofs (the new version of the old tin roof). The tiles are mostly on the blocks of units for retirees. Interesting. Not world-shaking but just the sort of thing you don't notice until you start walking every street.

I've been tired and grumpy lately. Bit of pain from the guts and I'm not sleeping well. But I rarely feel like not walking. Haven't felt like that since I got into the swing of this walkies thing. I've felt much healthier since I started.

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Haka & Fun with Wangs

2006-01-22T20:40:00.000-08:00

From Bash.org: Purely in the interests of science, I have replaced the word “wand” with “wang” in the first Harry Potter Book … Let’s see the results …

Haka - video of & meanings behind that cool NZ Maori war dance. The one used to intimidate rugby enemies.

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Walk #45 - Gallipoli

2006-01-22T20:32:00.000-08:00

(Walked 15th of August 2005)

Bloody windy today. Very strong gusts and getting stronger. The denudatas being stripped of flowers, the huge old gums on the Mountain bowing and tossing, leaves and twigs and stray newspapers flying through the air.

Had a nice long walk planned. But I was a bit tired and the wind was starting to drive dust into my eyes. So I finished halfway and nipped off home by bus.

It wasn't windy when I started out. Bit of a light breeze, high white streaks of cloud, the day warming up. I wondered if I'd be hot in my jumper. Wasn't long before I was glad of it.

Found a couple more tiny parks, noted some more lanes for a future Walk project, regarded the magpies with suspicion (it’s nearly swooping season), noticed the azaleas are coming out again but almost all the camellias have had theirs buds killed by the cold nights. The bottlebrushes and banksias haven't peaked yet and the pencil pines are showing their seed cases.

The first few streets had plenty of fifties and seventies houses among the thirties and forties ones. Not much in the last twenty years except sympathetic renovations.

I went past the unofficial used caryard again (cars for sale are parked outside the Council depot on the main road) and down the side of the primary school. A long building near the fence looked like it was built in the forties. Further along there was a much older school building. It had two classrooms and was about the size of a house. At first I thought it was but openings in the veranda rails showed it was classrooms and they were old enough to be the original rails. It was hard to date. There was no date on the school sign and there’s nothing online about the school’s history. I’m guessing when I say 1900 but I could easily be right.

The street beside the school is Waterloo. It was mostly seventies, with a few forties houses in original form or bricked-over in the seventies. Close to the Mountain the streets were older. Thirties and forties mainly with a few dozen pre-1920s houses lurking behind layers of extensions and renovations.

Warwick was a real hodgepodge of building eras, including a brand spanking new set of units still being sold. They weren't bad. White with grey roofs. The street trees were jacarandas. They make beautiful street trees when in bloom. Though they’re loathed with great passion and vehemence by those who hate leaves.

By the time I got round into Gallipoli, the wind was gusting hard and half the time I had my eyes closed due to the dust being whipped up. What I did see of Gallipoli was mainly forties and thirties with a sprinkle of the ubiquitous unattractive seventies houses.

At the end of Gallipoli I was halfway through my planned walk and dead tired. The extra flowering of plants all winter has been great but it's meant I've been suffering hayfever all winter. I've got a pretty mild case but it’s starting to take its toll in the form of headaches and tiredness and today's wind was playing hell with it. So I stopped at the end of Gallipoli and caught the bus home and now I'm thinking about having a nice afternoon nap.

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Walk #44 - Tasmania To The Great War

2006-01-22T19:55:00.000-08:00

(Walked 13th of August 2005)

Today I walked from Tasmania to the 1st World War. I started at Hobart Street and finished in The Dardanelles. It was hard on the feet.

It was a good long walk though and chewed off a decent chunk of my remaining streets. I’m halfway now and could easily finish before the end of spring (31st of December).

It was nippy when I went out. The sun was warm as usual but there was a cruel breeze. But I was only chilly for a few minutes and by the end of my walk that breeze was cool rather than cold and was welcome.

Hobart Avenue was mostly forties and before. There were a few seventies brick-overs and a couple of sixties places but not many. Makes sense. It’s close to the beach and Whatsit Street.

There were three old shops on it. None of them is on my list of pre-1940 buildings from last week’s research. Pity. They looked old enough to be included. They were all thirties or earlier. Two of them have been turned into pricey cafés and the third is an empty rundown house. There was no demolition or development order on it so I’m guessing it’ll be there for a few more years. [UPDATE, January 2006: Unfortunately not.]

It was a pretty quiet walk. The Bledisloe was on and ever rugby tragic on the Peninsula was indoors with his sweaty mates oohing and groaning over goals and penalties.

An elderly dog wandered about making friends with people and nearly getting run over and a big vee of ibises flapped over heading for Barrenjoey Head. I turned down the second street and found The Garbage House. You know those Dear Old Things who’re found dead after three weeks surrounded by cats? It was one of those houses. A crappily built seventies place on a corner. The three VW vans on the verge were stuffed full of garbage. All in white plastic bags from the supermarket. There was a narrow veranda running halfway down the side of the house. It was filled with more garbage in bags and some boxes. The garbage bins out the front looked empty. The weirdest things in this universe are human.

(Big version. This photo taken 6th of January 2006. On the 13th of August 2005 the veranda was also piled high with garbage.)

That street and the rest of today’s streets were long and straight and ran parallel to Ocean Beach Road and fitted the seventies settlement pattern I noticed last week.

There was another lawn bowls club and an oval at the end of the street. The BMX and skateboard park on the other side of the oval was too far to be noisy. There was some bellowing from the soccer game on the oval but I didn’t stay long.

I plodded along, getting dozy in the sun. A small excitable dog rushed at me and jumped up, spinning ecstatically in the air then bounding off again. It was a puppy and rushed around grinning like mad. Its name was Ruby and it had three kids to work all that puppy energy off on. A couple of blocks further there was a large lugubrious dog laying in its driveway. Every few minutes it lifted its head and let out an aggrieved howl. A small dog a few houses away barked hysterically in reply.

Sat on a low wall for a few minutes rest. Got a couple of books from the op shop before I started. Had a look at them while I sat there and was disgusted to find the Tales of Mystery & Imagination are “retold by M.W. Thomas”. Bugger. That’ll have to go back. I want the real deal. But I also got a hardback 1991 copy of Miles Franklin’s My Career Goes Bung and something called Love On A Branch Line which I’ve heard of in a vague sort of way.

Put some more sunblock on and got back on my feet. The traffic was picking up again now. The Cup was finished. A Dear Old Thing passed me going the other way and Staffordshire terrier dragged its owner along. A few minutes later I sat in a bus-stop and coloured in the last street then got the bus home.

I’ve still got a big chunk of the flat streets in the middle to walk and most of the hill walks. But I’m halfway now.

Next walk

Fun With Maps

2006-01-22T19:46:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted 16th of August 2005)

Went on a research thingy today. Looking at maps in the local library. They've got a restricted access thing upstairs. Most of the local history stuff is up there.

(Big version)

Despite it being a crappy-looking seventies library the inside's pretty light and airy. The upstairs is a sort of suspended floor at one end of the building. Half is the office bit where all the boxes of donated material are sorted and tagged and catalogued and put in folders and the rest of it. Then there's the usual shelves and microfiche readers and big steel drawers full of stuff and nice big tables to lay things out on.

I had a good long gander at local council maps going back several decades. They gave me a nice clear picture of 20th century settlement on the Peninsula.

Got confirmation of most of the patterns I'd noticed myself:

Before all the land was filled up, the houses clustered around Umina, the train station at Woy Woy, Ettalong & Booker Bay, along Ocean Beach & Blackwall Roads and filled up all the foreshores.

A wide band of land along the bottom of the ridge wasn't built on until the seventies.

Learned some new things:

A lot of land was sold in the twenties but it was built on over the next couple of decades rather than immediately. (I'd assumed a lot of the forties houses were on land previously occupied by pre-1900 houses.)

Lots of owner-builders used to bring fibro sheeting up from Sydney in their own trailers. They had to come up the F3 which is a very windy road so as well as breakages from jolting there must've been a fair few flying sheet incidents.

Got a few references to be going on with and I'll be up there again next week with my photocopy list honed down to the bare essentials. Having a couple of those maps up on my wall will be excellent.

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Walk #43 - Springwood

2006-01-22T19:32:00.000-08:00

(Walked 10th of August 2005)

Walked another long straight old street today. It runs parallel to Ocean Beach Road and is about two thirds its length.

Terrace style units at the Whatsit Street end of Springwood.

Around halfway along Springwood there’s a small housing estate with a sign saying “IOOF Centre Houses”. It looks rather like a retirement village but was clearly built in the forties or very early fifties. Maybe for maimed soldiers or something. Googled and found a potted history mixed in with a bit of a rant about them by some pollie.

Springwood has a lot in common with Ocean Beach Road. A similar pattern of settlement. Though Springwood has a lot less seventies houses. One of the few seventies houses I did see had a brush fence round it and a Federation style veranda added. It also had some leadlight repro windows. Couldn’t see the garden but I’m guessing it had lavender and other bushes popular around Federation. It was a great example of how even an ugly boxy seventies house can be redeemed. Can’t find exactly what I’m looking for on Google but this will give you an idea of the veranda. Ignore that rather extraordinary protruberance protruberating from the roof.

When I get my digital camera I’ll be off on an orgy of photography. I want to photograph as many of the oldest houses I can and have a good long leisurely look at them. So many of them are a jumble of additions and extensions. And make a record of them before they all get knocked down and replaced by bland clumps of units.

In a short street up the top end of Springwood there was a new house being built. One of those flashy, unnecessarily large houses that’ll be sold in five years when the owners finally sink under the weight of their mortgage.

Anyway, stopped and asked one of the neighbours what happened to the guy with the strange caravan who’d lived there. He’d always had bits and pieces of old furniture on the verge waiting for the Council collection truck to come and there was a handwritten sign attached to the front fence detailing some grievance against the Council or the State government or someone.

In the driveway he’d had the strange caravan. It was a homemade affair. Built over and around and on top of an old standard caravan I think. It was double-storey and the exterior was sheet metal. Interesting choices. The neighbour said he’d sold up and taken the caravan out to the bush (the countryside) to look for gold. I don’t imagine the poor dear got very far. That probably illegal, over-shiny, roasting hot caravan would’ve got him picked up by the wind or picked up by the cops.

Down near Whatsit Street there was a row of eighties units. The dormer windows were a bit lumpy but the general design and execution was not bad. They were in the style of single storey workmans’ terrace houses in Sydney. Very much the sort of thing, sans dormers, Doreen & Mar (The Sentimental Bloke) would’ve lived in.

When I started out there was a bit of a breeze and it built up steadily as I walked. By the time I finished at Whatsit Street, there was a wind howling along the powerlines and whipping newspapers out of people's hands. Above Maps & Exploration in the library a window was rattling like a poltergeist had hold of it.

Right now black cloud up from Sydney is creeping across the sky and the sound of the wind through the tiny sliver of window I’ve left open is the shriek of an angry ghost. God, I love the wind noises.

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Walk #42 - Two New Patterns

2006-01-22T19:20:00.000-08:00

Not the most exciting walk today but pleasant enough. Apart from the bit where the old guy peering half-blind over the steering wheel of a 4WD (SUV) nearly ran me over. He was having enough trouble working out where the road was, let alone the pedestrians. Perhaps it was him the ambulance rescue truck was chasing.

(Big version)

Mostly little yappy dogs behind fences today. Bored silly. A rottweiler pup wandered out to the footpath to make friends but got scared when I put my hand out. A plump cat streaked home along the verge and sat watching me suspiciously from a warm rock in its front garden. More magnolia denudata in full and beautiful bloom too.

I found another park not on my map and sat there for a while. It was just a couple of house blocks square. A low fence, a jungle gym and swing, couple of picnic tables and two dozen paperbark trees. Very pleasant spot to spend a few shady minutes.

I was facing a long straight street running from Ocean Beach Road (which is one of the main roads) back to the ridge. There are long straight streets on either side of Ocean Beach Road, running perpendicular to it. I've walked maybe half of them now and all of them have had mostly forties and some seventies houses on them.

There are shorter streets, like the astronaut streets, running parallel to Ocean Beach Road. Those streets are almost entirely seventies. A few of them so far've had a couple of sixties houses.

Add to that the amount of the parallel streets with paperbarks as street trees and the increase of paperbark parks through the seventies streets and I think we're seeing a couple more patterns.

1. The long straight streets running perpendicular to Ocean Beach Road were made in the forties or possibly the thirties, and the shorter streets running parallel to Ocean Beach Road were made in the sixties and seventies.

2. The sixties and seventies streets weren't made until dry land on the Peninsula started to run out and boggy ground became profitable.

Not the world’s most earth-shattering discoveries but it's fun to make them for yourself.

After I'd sat there thinking all that through I finished my walk. Up behind the high school, down the hill on the other side then home.

There was no footpath behind the high school. There was a de facto storm drain on the downhill side of the road. That was more even ground than the lumps and dips of driveways on the other side.

On the uphill side of the road there were two and three storey houses pressed back against the hill with steep driveways and staircases up to their front doors. Peering between the trees on the downhill side I worked out they must have a view over to Phegans Bay and perhaps to the F3 (motorway between Sydney & Newcastle).

The downhill side was all pine needles and lantana and goat tracks down into the back of the high school. It smelt like stale pee. The sound of tardy teenagers below was barely audible over the little yappy dogs going berserk on balconies on the uphill side.

It was a warm day. Verging on hot. I was pretty warm when I got home and thirsty despite the mid-walk apple.

Next walk

Rant

2006-01-22T19:15:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted 8th of August 2005)

If the previous post seemed a little tense and distracted, it was. Opened up my email when I got home and found an email from my aunt. My father's emailed my aunts and uncles telling them he's not speaking to them anymore.

Jesus. H. Christ.

As long as I've known him my father has been irrational, petty, tyrannical, self-deluding, selfish and ... I said irrational already.

Now, after behaving like a complete swine after Gran's death, he's decided not to speak to his brother and sisters anymore.

I'm so fucking tense. My scalp is so tense it feels like my skull will crush under the pressure and there's a tennis ball-sized headache thumping over my eye. I'm twitching with the effort of not booking a flight to Perth to bludgeon some sense into him. After everything he put my aunts and uncles through after Gran’s death and now this.

Think I'll totter off and take a handful of headache tablets.

P.S. I forgot egomaniacal and self-important.

[UPDATE, January 2006: My father has since cut off everyone in the family, including me. Looking back, this has been coming for a long time and if he could be dragged to a doctor I doubt he'd get a clean bill of mental health. Sad but true.]

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Walk #41 - Egg & Spoon

2006-01-22T18:42:00.000-08:00

Rather nippy wind blowing on and off today. Snowed down south in the last few days and the wind was coming up the coast off that. But I was warm enough while I was walking. And it wasn’t constant so the cats and birds had time to sun themselves.

So did a black rabbit with a white nose. It was crouched on someone’s lawn as I went past. Thought it was a blackened stump but then it twitched. The whole lawn had a nibbled look so maybe it was let out to earn its keep as lawnmower.

Met a lovely friendly dog and saw three other beautiful beautiful dogs. The friendly dog was bitsa. Medium-sized, short-haired, white with brown ears and a pointy nose. It trotted straight up to me and gazed up at me fondly. It sniffed my hand and leaned against me for a scratch behind the ears. Then it puts its paws up on my legs so I could give it a nice hearty chest rub.

The three beautiful dogs were in the back of a ute on Whatsit Street. They were so beautiful everyone stopped to watch them go past. Young dogs with long bushy tails. Classic dingo colour. Deep gold. We asked each other is they were pure dingo. Their heads were certainly dingo shaped. The muzzle shape and the forward pointing ears. But they had a bit more brow ridge. I’ll never know I guess, unless I spot their owner on foot one day.

Birds were twittering and carrying on in the trees in the side streets when the wind dropped. The magnolia denudata and camellias and bottlebrush and golden wattle are still flowering. The bottlebrushes attract lorikeets and some sort of sparrow thing. Honeyeaters like bottlebrushes too I think. They certainly go for the wattles. There was one sitting warbling on a fence. I got quite close before it flew off and noticed it had a pale yellow patch between its legs. The back view was a bit unfortunate. Looked like a white bum with a grubby bumcrack.

I walked four side streets today. Nothing to write home about in terms of visual splendour but interesting enough. Found a few more pre-20s rooflines and one house that looked almost untouched since a refit around the thirties.

The settlement pattern is really starting to emerge. I’ve walked nearly half the Peninsula now and so far I’ve seen a lot of the main clumps of settlement. The thirties, forties and seventies are fairly evenly spread over the Peninsula, with higher concentrations of the forties round the three main centres: the train station, Ettalong & Umina. The seventies has a few dozen streets of its own, streets that just didn’t exist until then, mainly on former swampy ground and in South Woy Woy round the big end of the golf course. The pre-30s houses are a lot more scattered though there’s fairly high concentraions of them round the train station, Ettalong & Umina and along Ocean Beach Road.

All that can be read in a local history book in the library of course. But seeing it for myself gives me a far greater understanding of the Woy Woy and Woy Woyans. And a chance to make a list of the worst and best of Woy Woyan domestic architecture.

The dogs were yapping and howling a lot today. They started off again as I went past. They’d already been excited by the ambulance sirens and noise from the school carnival.

The carnival was at the end of McEvoy. There’s some bush there and an big oval in the middle of it. Had a glance as I marked off McEvoy on my map. The place was overrun by kids in school uniforms and someone with a loud hailer (bullhorn) was exhorting the eight year olds to line up for the egg-and-spoon race.

At the end of my walk I came out onto Whatsit Street. Outside the supermarket there was a guy in a bear suit and a barbeque to raise money for some charity. I handed over my gold coin and got a sausage.

Then I got the bus up to the top of The Rampart. Pretty steep going up that hill. The bus was in first gear all the way up. The view was great. Across to Phegans Bay, the whole sweep of Umina Beach from Half Tide Rocks to Patonga Ridge, and out over Patonga Ridge to Barrenjoey Head and the Northern Beaches beyond. Loverly. (Map.) It’ll be a bastard getting up that hill on foot but it’s all in a good cause and the photos will be great.

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In other news

2006-01-22T18:36:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted 5th of August 2005)

My basil is dead. I've been nursing it for a week or so and today it turned up its toes.

No idea what killed it. Maybe not enough sun. I don't know. The label says 'full sun or part shade' and it's been in the kitchen window where it gets the afternoon sun. I'll get another one and try again.

One of the Dear Old Things may have joined the basil on the other side. There was an ambulance in the driveway this morning and a small silent crowd of neighbours outside her flat. The ambulance guys were in there for yonks then one of them came out for the trolley and the back board. Fifteen minutes later I saw the same ambulance going full tilt down the main road, sirens wailing. Not a good sign. Poor bugger. (UPDATE, January 2006: She did join the basil, poor thing. Massive stroke. She lived a few days in hospital then didn't wake up.)

It's been a big week for ambulance activity. They've been howling up to the F3 (Newcastle to Sydney freeway) nearly every day this week and I've been woken up in the middle of the night by sirens a couple of times.

But it's not all doom and gloom and death. One of my recently acquired daisy bushes is hale and hearty and has a flower ready for tomorrow's sun.

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Walk #40 - A Maze Of Lanes

2006-01-22T18:20:00.000-08:00

(Walked 2nd of August 2005)

Today was dogs, lanes, the sun, the sixties and sheep.

(Big version) Not a strictly relevant photo but I don't know what walk it originally belonged to.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if a house with forties add-ons is a holiday house turned retirement house or a pre-20s cottage. When people build a holiday home they build simply and cheaply and sometimes used recycled windows.

So you find yourself staring down the side of someone’s house for ten minutes trying to work out which it is. This leads to curtain-twitching from suspicious neighbours and the local stray comes to see if you’ve got anything to eat or steal. And you go away none the wiser. What you really need is some old maps from the local Town Planning office.

As well as the stray there were plenty of dogs out and about today. I walked mainly in the heart of the Peninsula, the older side streets in the centre.

Dear Old Things were out for a walk with their Dear Old Dogs trailing wearily behind them. Some sort of small terrier with short white hair and black spots chased a car down the road with vigour and vim then came back for a sniff at me. A couple of large silent dogs sat together in a hole in their front yard. They gazed at me with mild interest then shut their eyes again. The grey one raised its muzzle to the sky to get the sun on its throat. An middle-aged Staffordshire terrier gazed at me hopefully as I went past. Not sure if it wanted food, a scratch or a new owner. Down at the beach an elderly balding dog of unknown breed sat sedately with its retiree owners and watched younger dogs gambolling in the surf and biting each other on the leg.

I sat at the beach for a while. The sun was warm, almost hot. A chubby guy sat on his tackle box and fished off the beach, a small power boat zigzagged past through the deep water channel, a couple of parents chased their toddler and made it spit up the handful of sand it was eating.

It’s a narrow stretch of water just there on the corner where Ettalong Beach ends and the ocean beach starts. I was sitting directly across from Half Tide Rocks on Wagstaffe Point. There was a light white haze over Barrenjoey Head and beyond that the faint brown haze that hangs over Sydney (Barrenjoey Head is the northenmost point of Sydney). That was to my right.

Between Barrenjoey Head and Half Tide Rocks was the Tasman Sea, Box Head, Lobster Beach and Little Box Head. I can name them all now without the aid of a map.

To my left was Kourung Point on the other corner of Wagstaffe, Ettalong Beach opposite Hardy’s Bay and along to Memorial Avenue. Nothing at the ferry wharf. The Excrescence Formely Known As The Memorial Club was partly obscured by some nearby bushes and, beyond them, the tea tree forest. It looked very neat and dense and shady from a distance. Reminded me of the illustration of the hundred acre wood in one of my old Winnie-the-Pooh books. It’s tea trees instead of whatever-they-ares but it looked that tiny grove Where The Woozle Wasn’t.

There are lanes between the older streets. In the wide part between the ocean beach and the lagoons where the streets are laid out long and straight. You can pick the lane streets pretty quick. No driveways. All the garages are at the back with access off the lane.

Between the streets the lanes form I-beam shapes laying on their sides. They’re pretty much all connected. Bet they’re a real bastard for the police chasing some swine on foot on a dark night.

The lanes are a network of almost-secret streets covering half the Peninsula. You can walk by lane only from McMasters Road to Whatsit Street. That’s a bit over 3 kms (1.86 miles). All up there would be over 20 kays (12.43 miles) of lanes that I know of. At a conservative estimate. Walking them will give me a quite different experience of Woy Woy.

So far I’ve seen little of the sixties in the architecture of the Peninsula. The forties and seventies are the predominant types. There’s the older houses, sometimes partly obscured by forties and seventies renovations and additions, and clear but quiet thread of fifties houses. But before today I’d seen only a handful of sixties houses and all of them along the beach streets.

Today’s streets were very mixed. Fairly steady building from the twenties (or further back) through to the present, with the two big population increases of the forties and seventies. There were more fifties houses in five middle-length streets than in the whole length of Ocean Beach Road & Bourke Street and a good dozen sixties houses. There’s another three streets between today’s lot and Whatsit Street and I’d put good money on finding the fifties and sixties there too.

The sheep I can’t find a picture link for. They were horned sheep and sheep of any kind were not what I was expecting to come across on a quiet street in suburban Woy Woy. Thought they were a dog at first. One was laying on the grass just outside the fence of a house. It had a brown head and a white body and short sharpish horns and floppy ears. The other one was the same breed. It was inside the fence. The house was a rather scruffy place. A rental perhaps. One half was two-storeys with thirties windows upstairs and fifties ones downstairs. The other half was pure fifties. The sheep just stared at me and enjoyed the sun.

That was the last street of today’s walk. I was getting v-e-r-y sleepy in the sun and also very hungry. I marked the last street off on my map then tottered off to get some lunch and put some more films in for developing. (Can’t hardly wait to get my digital and cut the photography budget back down.)

Just one final word for today: please, for the love of God, if that’s your pleasant fifties house on Ocean Beach Road, get rid of the iron lace and that rather twee lamp.

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Hills & Ridges

2006-01-22T18:08:00.000-08:00

Bit of a map to show you how many hills there are round Brisbane Water.

(Big version)

The green is where the hills and ridges rise up from the flat land of the Peninsula and narrow fringes of flat shore.

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It was aliens wot did it

2006-01-21T21:51:00.000-08:00

Weasel caught in own web

On the news last night they showed John Howard, Australian Prime Minister (president) and all-round wanker, visiting some Australians in a London hospital ward. They were injured in the London bombings on the 7th.

There was a woman in a head brace. Didn’t catch her name. She asked Howard if he thought the bombings where linked to the invasion of Iraq and if we’re next. He was not amused at being called on camera. She was just an ordinary Australian and she called him on his bullshit and backflips. I liked her.

I’d give you a link but I can’t find one. The bomb scares a few minutes later bumped the gladhanding off the radar. Here’s the national newspaper if you want to dig yerself. No registration required.

It Was Aliens Wot Did It

Couldn’t find a date for that map with the two swamps. The magazine it’s from is a 1970 amateur local history and has very few attributions in it.

I was at the big table in the library again. Next to the big window. There’s a single shelf of local history books in the Woy Woy library. Most of them are in a room in the Gosford one, which is the central one for the Gosford Library system. I looked for a date for the map then wrote down the call numbers of a few other books to come back to. Local history books are Not For Loan.

Found a book called Paddocks, Palaces & Picture Shows which was about the history of local cinemas. Found the section on Woy Woy with its lovely old black and white photos.

One cinema ran from 1915 to 1924 and the projection room regularly caught fire. No address for it but it seated 200 so it must’ve been a decent sized building and it was “near the railway”. When it was demolished in 1924 a bank was built on the site. That was easy. There’s a 1970s Commonwealth Bank two doors down from the corner, opposite which is the train station.

The next one was built in 1922, also on Blackwall Road, on a site 90 feet by 200 feet and seated 1,535 people. Couldn’t work out where that site was. I know the road there fairly well. The area of the shops is only one block long and I’m sure I know all the old buildings on it. There was a lot of verbiage about the films they showed there and the lovers’ seats and then “closed in 1974 and the site bought by AV Jennings [national property developer] for a shopping centre”. Bingo! I was sitting right next to it. Looking straight ahead out of the big window in the library is the front half of the library, then the old firestation to the left of that then the white pebbledash wall of the small shopping centre.

I felt a warm glow of satisfaction. With my knowledge of those sites, the old pub round the corner and the 1914 building still standing next to the bank, I’m building up a decent picture of what the place was like before it started to boom.

The alien thing was the busdriver. Most of our busdrivers are pretty normal sort of people. Today’s guy has always seemed pretty normal. Not so today.

He’d been talking to the only other person on the bus when I got on. They carried on. Graffitti was the topic and the busdriver said “You know who does that right?” He lowered his voice dramatically. “Aliens!”

The other guy and I snorted but the busdriver nodded empathically. He seemed dead serious. Why aliens? “Because you never see them do it!”
Uh huh. Mate, aliens are not going to come all this way just to abduct a few lonely farmers and scrawl some badly-spelt graffitti in Woy Woy.
“But you never see them!” was his defence. And the occasional dead TV or mattress in a ditch? The Council! To put up the rates!

Mate, those little pills the doctor said you should take? You should take them. For all of us.

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Walkies #39 - Longest Street

2006-01-21T21:25:00.000-08:00

(Walked 29th of July 2005)

The longest street on the Peninsula is Ocean Beach Road. It runs from Woy Woy Inlet to the beach and is 6 kilometres (3.73 miles) long. (The Long March was 9k (5.59 miles).)

It’s mostly straight and made a good plodding walk. I deviated from it only once, to polish off a couple of small streets missed on The Long March. They didn’t take long but long enough for a very unattractive drunk sitting on a rubbish bin to hit on me.

I’d covered about six blocks of Ocean Beach Road weeks ago but I started from the start and went over that bit again for the sheer satisfaction of walking the whole street in one go. So now it makes a nice black line down the middle of the Peninsula, making the areas of unwalked streets look smaller.

I’ve now walked a bit over a third of the Peninsula. I’ve been walking since March and my planned finish date is the end of Spring. Which is the 1st of December in Australia. It’d be good to finish at the beginning of Spring (1st of September) but looking at how far along I am now, that seems unlikely to happen. I could pile on the speed but that would take a lot of the fun out of it.

Anyways, back to Ocean Beach Road. The two little streets were 100% seventies, including that unlovely block of flats with the drunk out the front. But Ocean Beach Road was quite an architectural delight. Didn’t start out that way though. There were some nice forties houses at the Woy Woy Inlet end but also quite a lot of seventies places.

As I walk the streets of the Peninsula I think a lot about the settlement patterns and it seems likely the pre-1940s housing would’ve been fairly scattered. There would’ve been some clustering around the main parts. Up near the station, at Booker Bay and at Ettalong. But other than that, there was the whole Peninsula to spread out on.

Around the station there’re few pre-war buildings left. The old Woy Woy pub is still there, preserved in alcohol no doubt, a pleasant house a few doors down which may or may not have been the original cop shop and a few shops with high facades and the dates on them. The rest was bulldozed between the forties and seventies to make two small shopping centres, the Clock Tower Centre (mostly offices) and various small shops.

So I’ve been looking closely at rooflines and down the sides of houses in the hope of spotting the oldest houses. Usually I find one or two a week. Today I saw dozens.

At the beginning it was mostly the seventies and forties. Just one pair of old cottages, one well-maintained and the other looking rather careworn. Then after a dozen blocks, the thirties set in. Then I started noticing some older rooflines.

Left: Cumberland Street Sydney circa 1879.
Right: Australian farm house around the same time.

These two drawings are versions of the same roofline. I’m not yet sure exactly when they were replaced by other styles but I’m thinking 1890.
They're the sort of older rooflines I was seeing on Ocean Beach Road. Almost all were partly disguised by forties building. Additions mainly, add-ons on the front and back of tiny pre-war cottages. I spotted a few under seventies reno’s too. Had to stop and have a good long stare at the first one to see if I was seeing what I thought I saw. Yep, there it was. I stared hard enough and the outline became obvious. A cottage like the one on the right above, side on to the road, with an addition on each end in the forties or seventies, a hideous layer of render and a beigey-yellow paintjob. The delightful little sunroom on one corner I couldn’t date. Might’ve been 1980s, might've been quite recent. Another block down and another cottage facing the same way, an addition on each end and another one a block after that.

(Big versions)

On the right hand side of the road they faced Ocean Beach Road. There was one with a bullnose veranda I wasn’t sure about. Hard to tell if it was a pre-war cottage with a forties roof and a brand new bullnose or a forties holiday house. I’ll go back for another look and also see if I can find it in the library.

(Big version)

A lot of them down past McMasters Road had lean-to additions on the back and in the classic forties style on the front. Sometimes the original cottage windows had been replaced with wider forties ones. Sometimes they were replaced again with tacky seventies aluminium windows. Way to spoil the symmetry and balance.
Right down the beach end there was a cottage with its roofline intact. It was in good nick and had yuppies living in it so I’m guessing there was a sizable addition out the back. It was beautiful. Couple of nice bottlebrushes in the garden, lovely soft green paintjob, bullnose veranda.

From there I went down to the beach. A motorbike was changing gears up on the hairpin bend on Patonga Ridge, three surfers were sitting astride their boards on the flat surf and a class from the local primary school was poking around in the sand in their sunhats. A couple of sand dunes along a guy was asleep on his back with his mouth open and his tackle box by his side. The sun was almost hot on my back. I started to get sleepy. I jumped up and headed for the busstop.

On the way back the bus passed a couple of magnolia denudata in full flower. Beautiful.

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Francine Finished

2006-01-21T21:15:00.000-08:00

Francine started her walk of every street of Minneapolis in January 2002 and finished on Sunday the 10th of July 2005. She had a small celebration with friends at the finishing point and got on national radio and on the telly.

Since then she’s been off her feet recovering from (unrelated) foot surgery. She’s become something of a celebrity, with dozens of articles about her on the net and no doubt some more in the print-only media. She’s also connected to her fellow every-street walkers around the world and is mentioned on related and unrelated blogs.

News sites across America:
1,071 miles under her feet (Star Tribune.com)
Duluth News Tribune
KARE 11.com
WCCO.com (includes news footage)
The Boston Globe
WKBT.com news
The Odd Truth (CBS)
The Buzz
Lancaster Online
Cave News - Unusual news stories
College of St. Catherine News.

Non-news sites:
New York City Walk
Catron County Walk
Me, my life + infrastructure
Coffee Grounds
The Hiawatha Project
Newsosaur
Car Free 2005

Francine’s website:
Francine Corcoran Photography

Got a link about Francine I left off the list? Bung it in the comments.

Next walk

Walk #38 - Howling Gale & Ferry Ride

2006-01-21T20:48:00.000-08:00

Got the kettle on and am going to inspect my pot plants for wind damage when it boils. There’s been a howling gale here today and it’s still windy. It’s just on sunset and instead of the clouds going pink or purple or whatever, they’re gold and there’s a weird and beautiful golden light. Beautiful end to a day of thoroughly enjoyable weather.

(Big version)

Went on a ferry ride. Up into the smaller part of Brisbane Water and back. Up close to the mangrove islands, little old houses inhabited by Dear Old Things, big ugly glass rich people’s houses to diss, a Dear Old Thing on the ferry who couldn’t remember where she was. Very nice afternoon out.

(Big version)

Before that I Walked one short street overlooked on a previous walk then walked along the foreshore park. It was bright and sunny but too windy for the seagulls to crowd round after food. Only the pelicans were still up in the air. The ducks and seagulls and one fat white goose were huddled on the ground with their beaks tucked round under their wings. The magpies had gone wherever magpies go in such weather.

(Big version)

(Big version)

Had my lunch on a seat under a stand of pines and listened to the wind howl and shriek along the powerlines and through the pines. The sun sparkled bright white on the water, the boats jerked and twitched at their moorings, pelicans hung in the air facing into the wind, two old guys walking along the footpath giggled with joy as they leaned into the wind. Twiggy bits off the trees were scattered on the ground everywhere and there was the occasional crash of an unfastened gate somewhere. Hope it’s still windy when I go to bed tonight. Love laying there all tucked up in bed listening to the wind.

Been searching my map for another Long March to do. I can feel another one coming on. Perhaps tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain.

Next post - Francine Finished
Next walk

Walk #37 - Turkeys, Steak & Icecream

2006-01-21T20:24:00.000-08:00

(Walked 24th of July 2005)

Went back up to that high street where I got the cloudy misty photos over the Peninsula. Scarcely a cloud in the sky all day so there was no way I was going to get the same type of photo as the one above. But I’m after photos of the good views in all weathers and they’re certainly good views up there.

(Big version)

So this time I had an extra film and nothing was going to stop me from getting all the photos I wanted. Well, that was the theory anyways. Forgot to change the batteries before I went and ran into a bit of aggro with that.

(Big version)

But I did get those lovely views over Phegans Bay I missed out on last time and that was the whole point of the walk. I was pretty warm by the time I'd climbed up there and got rather hot under the collar over the battery issue. But I forgot about all that looking for the right angles for the best pictures. The water in Phegans Bay and what I could see of Brisbane Water and Hardys Bay was bright blue in the afternoon sun. A pelican flapped along over Blackwall Road and more sirens went up to the F3 (motorway). Must’ve been a big prang up there.

As I came back down from the horn of Timbertop Drive a brush turkey stepped out of the undergrowth and stood near the kerb. I got my camera back out. It saw me and legged it across the road. I stalked it and managed to get off a couple of shots. It was in the shade though so I don’t know how much you’ll be able to see of the black turkey against the dark green of the trees in shadow. It went into the undergrowth on the downhill side of the road and I could hear it rustling about.

(Big version
Fact sheet thingy

A few metres further along a couple more turkeys crossed the road. Male and female this time. The males are black with yellow beaks and red jowls. Unless it’s red beaks and yellow jowls. We’ll know when I get the film developed. The females are dark grey with brown bits and white specks. The better to hide in the bush I s’pose.

Anyways, these two were too far away for decent photos so I stalked them. I walked as slow as I could, not treading on anything crunchy. The turkeys looked at me suspiciously and wandered along the curb. I took a photo in case they disappeared downhill. They stopped and squinted at me worriedly. I tried to look harmless. They started walking again. They were still in the shade so I was after at least one photo of them in the sun. They were heading into a patch of sun. Yes! Slowly they went, slowly I went after them. Slowly slowly they paced towards the patch of sun. They reached it! They stepped into it! I pressed the shutter button! Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Bloody battery was too low again. I gritted my teeth, steam came silently out of my ears. I gave it a few minutes while the turkeys scratched the grass and looked at things they might like to eat. I had another go. The battery would be okay for one shot now. I aimed, I steadied, I pressed. A vague whirr and buzz from the camera. I’d run out of film. Stone the bloody crows.

By the time I got a new film in the bastards were gone. They disappeared down someone’s driveway. I could hear them, or the other one, crunching over some dry leaves but I couldn’t find them. Ah well. Another day maybe. Got off another view picture to console myself. (UPDATE, January 2006: Luckily, as you can see above, the sunlit turkey photo was able to be developed.)

I’d gone for just the views from the top of Timbertop but seeing as I was there already I ripped off another walk. A few streets at the foot of the hill.

It was quiet now except for birds in the trees on the ridgeside. I could smell bush burning. Couldn’t see any smoke though. Must be someone firing up a barbeque using wood from the ridgeside. After a few minutes they put some steak on. Definitely a barbie then.

There were almost no cars on the road. A quiet snipping came from one backyard and a large dog barked at me lazily over a brick fence. It was the kind of warm afternoon where everyone who’s not out on their boat is laying on the sofa with the cricket on or BBQ’ing steak.

(Big version)

So far all the magnolia denudata I’ve seen for months have been in bud but not with more than a few flowers. Today I saw four of the pink and white ones completely covered in flowers. Beautiful. They’re hard to photograph well but I took a few photos and we’ll see how they come out. Also got another golden wattle photo. The wattles are in full and glorious bloom all over the Peninsula.

Marked off the last street of today’s walk and started back. I was pretty warm and my feet were starting to throb. They seem to throb more on the weekends. Weird. How do feet know what day it is? Anyways, I’d been hearing Mr Whippy (icecream van) for the last half hour and the sound was driving me batty. A nice cold icecream would go down a treat and take my mind off my aching feet. I could hear him in a street nearby. Then he came up the street I was walking. Oh bliss! I got a double choc top with extra choc and a chocolate bar sticking out of it. It went down a treat and I marched off home with renewed energy.

Next walk

Walk #36 - Dogs, Ducks & A Kick In The Head

2006-01-21T19:57:00.000-08:00

(Walked 22nd of July 2005)

Went down to the foreshore today. The long flat grassed foreshore that stretches from the Mountain to Brick Wharf then round the point there and along to the ferry.

Last time I was down there I could see a bushfire on Killcare Heights. No fires today. But plenty of that glorious warm sun again. Lots of people walking their dogs.

(Big version

A crowd of ducks were waiting for the next bucket of bread scraps at some Dear Old Thing's place just back from the foreshore. Her elderly kelpie leaning against the fence with a blissful expression as I scratched it. She told me she feeds about 200 ducks every morning at 7AM. Bet the neighbours love that.

A cat perched on a fence miaowing for attention as I went past. It sniffed my doggy hand cautiously and decided I was good for an ear massage no matter what I smelt like.

(Big version Panorama)

There's a tiny islet of sand opposite the end of Burge Road. When I say tiny I mean maybe 10 metres (32.81 feet) across. Last time I saw it was a couple of years ago. It had a low mangrove bush on it then I think. Today it had a couple of tiny bare trees and a low bush at one end. There seemed to be some grass on it too. I wondered if it'd still be there after some of the big winds we’ve had in the last year or so. But with all that growing on it I think it's here to stay. Fascinating to see it in the early stages of its evolution.

It was of course covered in pelicans. There were also two groups of pelicans nearby in the water. They were milling round in a circle, dipping their beaks into the water. Must've been milling round a school of fish. After about 15 minutes they started to drift off.

A small kid was standing on the rock wall that runs along Blackwall foreshore. She was trickling breadcrumbs down onto the mud in the mangroves for the ducks to eat. There was a few ducks but they buggered off when the cockatoos moved in. They were the white cockatoos with a tinge of pink and no crests. They stalk about on their big feet muttering to each other and picking seeds out of the grass or, in this case, breadcrumbs out of the mud.

It was half tide. The kid was standing at the end of a bunch of mangrove trees. Behind her and me was a small stand of pine trees. No sound from them. The breeze was too weak. In one tree a couple of cockatoos were cooing and billing. With the winter sun so warm lots of birds are displaying mating behaviour. The male was jerking himself about trying to work out how to mount the female. Eventually he raised a foot and accidently kicked her in the head. She squawked and knocked him off the branch and shat on him as he fluttered down and away. It's the other end you want, mate, and few of them regard a kick in the head as foreplay. In my experience anyways.

I enjoyed the view for a few more minutes. To my right was the curve of the foreshore park going to the foot of Blackwall Mountain. The trees along it were a mix of pines and gums and the private jetties were painted white or unpainted wood greyed by the sun. The houses were from the twenties or earlier through to the eighties and one nineties house with a boxy look softened by unpainted wooden slats shading the windows.

One of my favourite houses on the Peninsula was there. A small white wooden house with a closed-in veranda. Maybe from the twenties, maybe earlier. With a big old pine at one corner. Must be heaven to lie in bed in that house listening to the wind rushing and whispering in that pine and the waves lapping against the bank of the river.

At the end of the foreshore was Blackwall Mountain and Spit Bridge off the tail of it going across to Daleys Point. Most of St. Huberts was obscured by the two nameless mangrove islets then Rileys Island was beside and behind them. Rileys is a mangrove island too but bigger and has some tallish pines in the middle of it. Behind Rileys was the hill of Saratoga and behind that the ridge of Koolewong or Tascott. The mangrove trees where the kid had been obscured the rest of the view to my left.

Directly in front of me was a big old mangrove tree. A smaller one beside it had been the victim of a midnight chainsaw raid. It was laying in pieces in the mud, opening up a clearer view for the house immediately behind me.

A few metres to the right a shag was sunning itself on the prow of a small white wooden boat. That was tied up to an unpainted jetty. Past that a fisherman was dozing in a dingy with his line drooping in the water. You can't chuck a rock on the Peninsula without hitting a dozen guys with fishing rods. It's hobby fishing heaven.

A couple of motor boats buzzed past out near the islets and the cockatoos exhausted the supply of breadcrumbs. My bum was getting cold so I went.

Walked a couple more streets. One with the world's most boring set of units across the road from a smart white fifties house with perky blue trim. There was a rather pleasing set of units in the next street. Brand new, built of squarish sandstone-coloured bricks, soft grey roofs and trim. Very nice. There was also a beautiful reno of a twenties or thirties house. (Took a photo. Which you'll get to see next week some time.) There's also a pleasant little white wooden church on Blackwall Road. Very simple. Windows with small panes of coloured glass rather stained glass windows. I've had a gander inside and it's dead boring. Pity. But the outside is everything you could want in a little wooden church.

There's another, even smaller one a few blocks down. No idea what its inside was like. It's an environment centre or something now.

Demographics

Along the foreshores is the biggest shift. Used to be mostly Dear Old Things who'd been here since God knows when and bought land on the foreshore when it cost ten pounds an acre. Now there's a few of those Dear Old Things left, a few of their grandchildren living in the DOT's house while they sell the backyard, and rich bastards living in whacking great houses or flash apartments.

In the side streets there's less change. Another generation of retirees is moving in to replace the Dear Old Things as they drop off their perches. So that's yuppy commuters and soon-to-be DOTs and a few young families. The architecture's changing but that's mostly along the foreshores where it always changes first (see: rich bastards). The architecture in the side streets and along the main roads is turning away from the horrors and excesses of the seventies and eighties and back to the gentler outlines of Federation revival and sympathetic restoration.

Another Dear Old Thing in Kmart when I went to get this week's photos. Poor dear couldn't put the last number of his PIN into the machine. He kept bunging three numbers in then pressing 'OK'. But it was mildly entertaining and distracted the rest of us from the smell of his trousers.

There was a terrible crowd at the photo counter. A tangle of technical incompetents who couldn't get the SIM card or whatever out of their camera and into the printer machine then back out of the machine and back into their camera. But I got my photos and clambered back out over the tangle.

Next walk

Walk #35 - Sticky Bun

2006-01-21T19:45:00.000-08:00

(Walked 20th of July 2005)

It’s been below 5 degrees (41 fahrenheit) every night for the last week and 15 (59F) during the day. So there’s less flowers to be seen. Even the magnolia denudata that’re covered in buds are mostly just waiting to see what happens.

(Big version)

Here and there there’s a poinsettia still covered in blazing red flowers in a sunny sheltered spot. But everything else is looking pretty battered and brown. Except the natives. The Geraldton wax and golden wattles and bottlebrushes are starting to come into full flower now. In some streets, mainly seventies streets, they’re the street trees. Walked down a couple of seventies cul-de-sacs today lined with blooming bottlebrushes and swarming with happily buzzing bees.

(Big version)

Lots of cats and dogs snoozing in front yards, getting the sun on their stomachs. A fluffy chocolate-point cat near the hospital wanted to play and in another street a couple of plump galahs in an aviary soaked up the sun with their eyes closed.

A couple of big dogs grinned at me and tried to pull their owners off course as they were jogged past and one of those little white hairy dogs laid on its back to be scratched as soon as it came level with me. Think I’ve met this dog before. Its owner was embarrassed by the dog’s lack of caution around strangers.

Walked a tangle of short backstreets in the middle of the Peninsula. Mostly seventies and forties houses again, another purple house and plenty of recent units along the main road. Blackwall Road, the main road, was quiet.

Blackwall was backed up for a kilometre by the lollipop sign at the roadworks. It’s a busy road. Well, yes and no. Busy for the Peninsula yes, busy for a main road in a city no. It forms part of the route from the F3 motorway to the beach suburbs like Avoca and Terrigal. Plus there’s all those trucks going down it to the building site at Ettalong.

Outside the pool they were putting signs on the road at the new crosswalk. Now the pool building is up they’ve put in a set of traffic lights at the corner and a crosswalk with a traffic island and the full whatsit.

I always presumed they painted the words on the road but these guys were using pre-cut pieces of something or other. Couldn’t smell it but I imagine they fix them down with some sort of glue. There were two guys with lollipop signs holding the traffic back and two other guys on their knees arranging the bits of something or other into words. As I strolled past another guy with a clipboard was telling the two doing the words about a photo in the Main Roads newsletter of a guy carefully glueing down the last piece of the word ‘SOTP’.

Further down The Shop That Kills Businesses has changed hands again. It’s an old cottage, twenties or older, hidden under decades of revamps and shopfront windows. It’s on the main road and at a cursory glance I s’pose it looks like a good place for a shop. Lots of passing trade. Only they’re passing and not stopping. There’s no handy carpark for them to pull into and by the time they’ve found somewhere to park they’re at the shopping centre anyways and can’t be stuffed walking back. Every business that moves into that shop either goes out of business or gets the hell out of Dodge.

From there it was only a few blocks to the shops. Had a nice feed of Chinese for lunch and a sticky bun after then stood at the bus-stop with the sun on my back for ten minutes. Very theraputic.

Next walk

Walk #34 - Cold Ears, Hot Doughnut

2006-01-21T19:11:00.000-08:00

(Walked on July 17th, 2005)

Not a wildly exciting walk today. But that’s part and parcel of this walk-every-street thingy. You gotta do all the streets and not just the fun ones.

(Big version)

Anyways, it may well’ve been exciting in way that involved handcuffs and black helicopters if anyone’d noticed me loitering outside the electrical station. Went past one opposite the high school and stopped there to have a gander at it. Every night since the London bombings the community service announcements have urged us to report things like peeps lurking outside power installations. But I got nada.

But I wasn’t going to lurk forever. It was blowing a gale and my ears were freezing. Bloody hair needs tying back in the wind now and I forgot my beanie. I need a haircut actually. It’s starting to drive me batty.

(Big version)

Took a couple of photos of some half open magnolia denudata flowers. They’re notoriously difficult to photograph well. (Good photo here.) They’re starting to bloom now. They usually bloom right at the end of winter but they’re as confused by this sunshine as every other plant on the Peninsula.

The azaleas are losing their flowers. The lavender is blooming well though and the bottlebrushes. The frangipanis are all still at sixes and sevens and flowering willy nilly. Camellias are still blooming but many were pretty much stripped of flowers in that big wind a couple of weeks ago. The poinsettias lost half their flowers then too. That climber with flowers like bunches of orange fingers is blooming like mad all over the place.

(Big version)

The weather people on the telly have been threatening us with a proper winter in August. I think the bottlebrushes will keep blooming through that, sunshine or no. And the lavenders maybe. But it’ll be interesting to see which plants still have to energy to flower when spring comes.

(Big version)

Overhead the pelicans had found a half decent thermal. It was strong enough to carry them up a few hundred feet. Not many thermals on a day like today. They need heat and not too much wind. Thermals are what they sound like: hot or warm air. Where there’s hot air rising (over dark ground like carparks, over factories, over the houses of parliment) it rises in a cyclinder. Much like a tornado or cyclone (hurricane) only moving upwards instead of downwards and not at all fast.

(Big version)

Back at ground level I noticed the demountables (temporary classrooms) at the high school have been there for twenty years or more, had a chat to someone about their dog, saw a bright purple house and walked one street three times (twice by accident) then headed into the warmth of Deepwater (local shopping centre).

There was hardly anyone in Deepwater. Must all be exhausted after the frenzy of the toy sale last week. Normally on the last day of the school holidays the teenagers are hanging out somewhere looking resentful and the little kids are begging for one last doughnut.

Anyways, whatever the reason, I got a nice peaceful sit-down in the doughnut shop and they’d just run out of doughnuts so they had to make me a fresh one. Oh bliss! Piping hot, soft and fresh, dusted with cinnamon and encrusted with sugar. And the smell of fresh-ground coffeebeans. I closed my eyes and savoured every mouthful.

Next walk

Walk #33 - Governor Phillip

2006-01-21T18:28:00.000-08:00

(Walked 15th of July 2005)

Halfway through today's walk I was up on the Rip Bridge. I could see rain falling in the distance from there. There was a cold wind blowing up there and my nose was cold.

(Big version)

Great views though. Across the Blackwall foreshore and the northern end of the Peninsula out to West Gosford and Somersby and maybe as far as Mangrove Mountain. (Yep, mangroves don't grow on mountains so your guess is as good as mine.)

(Big version)

Looking the other way there was Fishermans Bay close to the other end of the bridge, then Hardys Bay straight ahead and Booker Bay off to the right a bit. Above Hardys was Killcare Heights. Beyond Killcare Heights is Maitland Bay and the Tasman sea but I couldn't actually see that.

(Big version)

There was a swathe of dead-leaved trees in the Bouddhi along the top of Killcare Heights. That's where that fire was a few weeks ago. Couldn't see the regeneration from where I was. The gums recover fast. It's true some species will germinate after a good roasting from a bushfire.

(Big version)

I could see most of the same view from the memorial 25 metres behind me. I'd just been there. It's marked as the "Governor Phillip Memorial" on all my local maps but it's not actually a memorial as far as I could see. It commemorates the first landing by white people on the Central Coast. As far as I'm concerned a memorial is for a dead person rather than an event. There's a square sandstone obelisk with three plaques on it. They read:

Exploration and discovery North Arm of Broken Bay March 3, 1788

We entered a very extensive branch from the ebb tide came out so strong
that the boats could not row against it in the stream
Gov. A. Phillip RN

Monday 3rd At daylight went into the No. branch
We found set out so strong that we could not pull ahead through between two projecting points, on which we landed in a cove adjacent: here we were met by several natives, men & women who all came freely about us
Lieut. Wm. Bradley 1788

"RN" is the Royal Navy. There was only the British navy then, no RAN (Royal Australian Navy). Had a good long look at the tide going under the bridge and I'm thinking the "two projecting points" are the unnamed points connected by the Spit Bridge and the "cove adjacent" is Booker Bay, which is directly below the memorial.

The Supply, the first ship of the First Fleet, arrived at Botany Bay (where Sydney airport is now) on the 18th of January 1788. All the four ships of the first fleet were in Botany Bay by the 26th. (So it's the 26th white Australians celebrate as Australia Day. Aboriginal people celebrate it as Survival Day and more power to them.)

(Big version)

Between the obelisk and the plinth with the map on it, there was a bit of bare rock. There was a small painted iron marker in to rock. It read "State Survey Mark Do Not Disturb 53643 NSW"

Took a bit of detective work and some undignified scrabbling up hillsides to get to the memorial thingy. Public access is not clearly marked on any of my maps, not even the 2005 one.

I set out from Ettalong. I was there last week and the streets I walked there today were the same mix of forties and seventies with fifties and some from the eighties to now.

Walked a couple of streets named after fish then across the park and along Hood. Hood must be a cold dark street. At eleven in the morning the shadow from the mountain was already on the front fences of the houses. They must have their lights on by lunchtime in winter. Sat there at the end of Hood for a minute looking at the beautiful cream and tawny gold of the cut rock of the underpass and searching the map for access to the memorial.

At the end of Hood there's the overpass of the Rip Bridge ramp. The underpass that goes under the overpass is Booker Bay Road. According to all my maps the Governor Phillip memorial thingy is accessible from Booker Bay Road on the Hood Street side of the ramp underpass. But all I found there was an almost vertical hillside and a private staircase up to someone's backyard. Hmm. On the other side of the underpass there was a street going up onto the hill. This'll be the access, I thought. But no. It was a cul-de-sac. Marked it off and had a chat with a couple of Dear Old Things about the lovely winter sunshine, drought and the fact that we'll all be drinking recycled wee in few years.

When I got to the top of the cul-de-sac I could see the memorial. The cul-de-sac was on the spine of Blackwall Mountain. The Spit Bridge end of the mountain is its tail. The bridge ramp was in a cut through the tip of the tail and across the ramp was the memorial. But I still couldn't see where the bloody access was. The Dear Old Things hadn't known. One of them, the back of whose house looked directly at the memorial said, "What memorial?"

But there was a carpark at the sodding memorial so there had to be a sodding access road somewhere. I studied the map and studied the memorial and studied the map. Bugger it, I said to a magpie, I can scramble up the slope beside the road there and get to the bastard that way. So back down to the underpass, then up a rough slippery track to the bridge ramp, along the edge of the ramp and another undignified scramble up a rough track to the memorial. Eureka!

Of course, as soon as I was up there I could see where the access road was. But hey, I was there at last and a cold wind had sprung up to cool me off from the scrambling. And the views were well worth it. Beautiful little bays, the untouched bush of the Bouddhi National Park from Daleys Point to Killcare Heights. The water blue where the sun was on it and a pleasing green in the shadow of Daleys Point. Booker Bay and Hardys Bay were fringed with private jetties. There was an oyster farm at Rocky Point and another one disappearing round into Rileys Bay.

It wasn't too quiet at the memorial. Behind me the traffic on the ramp and the bridge thrummed like powerlines in the wind. The Spit Bridge is a major thoroughfare for cars and light commercial traffic. But the views were peaceful.

Had a bit of a sitdown and a think about what the place looked like when Governor Phillip rowed into it in 1788. Not too much different from the view from there today. The houses are the big difference of course. Blank them out and the bridge and that's pretty much it.

(Big version)

The sun went behind the clouds again and the warmth from walking started to wear off. Got back on my feet and started off down the acess road. There was a house on it for sale. Lovely house. Soft grey weatherboard, a couple of Federation repro details. Had a look at the For Sale sign. “Deightful…million dollar views…fully fitted granny flat below”.

Had a glance down from the second carport. There was a short wooden staircase down beside the carport and I was expecting it to end at the granny flat. But to my delight it ended at a tiny fenced platform with a sign on it saying “Ensure gate is fully closed”. The platform was the car of a little private funicular. It was just big enough for two very close friends and a small dog. The rail stretched down the hillside at about forty five degrees and must’ve finished on a balcony. Couldn’t see the other end without falling down the hillside. How cool would it be having your own private railway? A little windy in that fenced platform thingy on windy evenings but we all gotta make sacrifices.

(Big version)

The access road curved down under the bridge in a horseshoe shape. Under the bridge it was quiet. The thrumming of the traffic was a whisper and a gentle clop as the cars went over the rain drain at the end. The was a short steep slope down to the water. The slope was covered in pine needles and the water lapped quietly. A couple of kids puttered past in a tinny (aluminium dingy) and a duck quacked somewhere nearby. Very soothing.

(Big version)

Round the corner was a tiny street only two or three houses long. At the end of it there was public access to the water. A tiny patch of grass, five tea trees and an electrical substation. It was maybe a hundred yards from the bridge. An interesting flag flew from someone’s jetty. Red and white stripes along the bottom, a silhouette of the Opera House and the Southern Cross in the top corner. Under the bridge a kayaker was paddling slowly but hard against the tide. Directly across the water at Daley’s Point was a three storey house. It had big balconies and a wide terrace above its jetty. But no garden. Not even a single pot plant. Boring. But perhaps they’ve got a secret shady conservatory behind one of those big windows.

To the left of Daley’s Point was St. Hubert’s Island with the hills of Saratoga and Davistown, some more distant hills, maybe at Gosford, then the north end of the Peninsula with Spion Kop with the TV repeater on top. Another pleasant view.

I was on the quiet side of the mountain now. Most of the traffic goes round the other side on Memorial Avenue. Wandered along, sussing out the forties houses on the mountain side and the seventies to noughties houses on the water side. On the water side there were a couple of building sites and a fugly seventies house that’s now a bed & breakfast. There’s a few short streets up the mountain side there and one that most of the way up to the lookout but I left them for another day.

Went down a short street on the other side of the road. There was a very pleasant white cottage with an enclosed veranda halfway along it. At the end there was a great find. A small house with shingles on it. You don’t see shingles often. They’re usually only on churches now. These ones were in good nick so they may’ve been replaced some time in the last few decades. Hard to say. The whole house looked in good nick. The sandstone foundation was dark with age, verging on brown but other than that the house looked good.

Not so the yard. First there was the two shipping containers rusting in the forecourt. Then there was the fugly seventies brick boatshed partly obscuring the view, the long grass and weeds and the rusting tractor and bits of crap. Then there was the new wall. Concrete blocks with sandstone faces being built into a retaining wall. Someone was planning to divide the yard into two levels. Good idea. But they might want to clear away all that crap first.

Back up onto the road round the mountain. From Blackwall Point to Blackwall Road it was dark and damp. Even the lantana didn’t do well there. The pole houses on the mountainside got enough light but the backyards opposite were sunless. Some had bamboo and waterlillies but many of the owners had obviously given up gardening. One backyard had a neglected pool in it. Grass growing right up to one end and the water murky green and opaque. No telling what was in there.

From the corner of the mountian I caught the bus home. I was finished for the day but it was a good walk.

Been feeling a bit crook (sick) and tired this last couple of weeks and I tend to hunch over a bit when I'm tired. But I notice walking reminds me to stand up straight and I feel much better after today's nice long walk.

Next walk

Walk #32 - Cotton Wool Clouds

2006-01-21T17:48:00.000-08:00

(Walked 13th of July 2005)

Everything I said about not bringing home any more plant cuttings this winter was a lie. Well, okay, I meant it when I said but this daisy bush today was just asking for it. Another one off the verge down by the beach. Ripped it up and stuffed it down the back of my satchel. It's big enough that it should survive the rest of winter. Some of its fellow daisies from a couple of months back are doing fine. Of the five, three are doing fine, one is definitely going into a decline and the other looks fine one week, sick the next then back to fine again.

(Big version)

It was cold and overcast when I got up this morning. It rained overnight and the ground was still wet. But it started to clear and by the time I went walkies it was clear bar a few high cotton wool clouds. The wind came back and I rugged up. Good thing too. It was a bloody cold wind, coming down from the north. Jackets were flapping, people's hair was lashing them across the face and under-dressed teenagers were shivering and blue.

Went down to Whatsit Street and walked five small streets. The two ending at the beach had several houses from the thirties and a couple of pleasant old twenties houses with enclosed verandas. I love enclosed verandas. They remind me of Nana's old house. The sleepout (enclosed veranda) at the back was full of interesting things to play with in rainy weather (an old copy of Astounding Space Stories and a jar full of odd buttons make a convincing asteroid belt for young astronauts to navigate through) and it was where the puppies spend their first few weeks. It had louvre windows and the wind whistled and howled through the cracks if they weren't shut tight.

(Big version)

There was a pleasant bungalow from around 1920 with a couple of huge old trees and a sympathetic upper storey added. It was done out in dark green and a deep creamy white. The right colours for its age. A few fifties houses, mostly not in good nick. One had suffered from an owner with too much time and not enough building skills and was barely visible behind layers of add-ons and crooked pergolas.

Building at the beach end has been pretty continuous since the forties. A pleasant sixties house on the corner of angles and windows on one corner, an unlovely block of seventies flats on another. Both streets were sixties and seventies at the beach end, eighties in the middle and nineties and noughties at the Whatsit Street end.

(Big version)

The sun was lovely. People have been huddled inside over a heater for the last couple of days. Today they were out with their hoodies up trotting along the beach. Dogs barked and leapt and picked up sticks. Tourists bailed people up and asked about ferries.

(Big version)

Took a few snaps at the beach. All my photos so far of Ocean Beach were taken on cloudy days. Watched the spray jump high as the waves hit the cliffs on the ocean side of Barrenjoey Head. There was a bit of surf but it was not enough to make a surfer leap with joy.

(Big version)

On the other side of Whatsit Street it was all forties and seventies again (the forties & seventies are two of the three big building booms on the Peninsula). The forties houses were okay. Nothing to write home about but fairly well built. The seventies houses were another story. Mostly cheap and shitty and coming apart where they stood, mortar going from between the bricks and a wall here and there sagging dangerously.

At one house there were deep churnings in the front lawn, a pile of bricks where next door's brick fence had been and injuries to the bushes in the front yard. A very careless parker lived there. Or a frequently drunk one. Round the corner, at another house, an attempt had been made to draw attention away from some tacky seventies brick by adding an upper storey and painting it virulent green. It was certainly eye-catching and not in a good way.

(Big version)

A couple of houses down a garden was crammed to the brim with plants. Bushes that needed six feet of space were planted six inches apart, trees were festooned with staghorns and hung with flaccid pot plants. Shade plants were in the sun and sun plants leaned desperately out of the shade. The veranda was crowded with ratty cane sofas and dog baskets and windchimes and little figurines of dogs and deer. Across the road a garage had been turned into a cabin (granny flat), much like the one where I used to live. The age and priorities of its occupant were made apparent by the quilt draped over the car's bonnet.

Near the Whatsit Street shops a Dear Old Thing cycled wobbily into the teeth of the wind. In the furniture shop there was a silent schaunzer. It'd been brought up in the shop and had no fear of strangers. Big bushy eyebrows and soft curly grey hair. It was as light as a feather when it put its paws up on my leg.

Fossicked in the library for a bit then caught the bus back. There was a Dear Old Thing on it who didn't know where his bus stop was and smelt terribly of stale pee. The driver stopped after the Dear Old Thing got off and examined the seat where he was sitting but it was dry enough.

Next walk

Walk #31 - Dark Day

2006-01-19T20:28:00.000-08:00

(Walked 8th of July 2005)

By lunchtime today there was no new news about the London bombings. So I picked up a couple of films from the developers then went walkies.

(Big version) From Ettalong Beach, looking into Pittwater in the distance.

There was cloud cover when I set out but it was high white cloud. But by the time I got to the start of my walk black clouds had come and it was dark enough that the flash of my camera came on.

(Big version) Similar view from a bit further along.

Walked the park along the foreshore. There was a memorial at one end of it for some local insurance person who did charity work for the elderly. Born 1907, death date unknown because some unattractive bloke with a couple of jack russels chose to perch his backside on it and obscure it. Then he tried to chat me up. Lose the bottle of beer in the park at lunchtime, mate, and you might get laid occasionally.

(Big version) Hardys Bay from Ettalong.

Sat at a picnic table and gazed down past Half Tide Rocks at Wagstaffe to Pittwater behind Palm Beach. It was one of those days when you don't know if you're hot or cold. There was no wind. The sulphur crested galahs were screeching in a banksia further along and some swallows were twittering like mad behind me. A couple of guys in serious cyclists rig-out sat murmuring to each other at a picnic table. A large sleek dog went past with its owners. It didn't need to be on a lead. It didn't take its eyes off their tennis ball. A small power boat buzzed slowly past. A light aircraft went over. Seagulls cawed at a kid with a sandwich on the beach.

After a few minutes I went off along the park again. There was quite a crowd at Ferry Street. The Palm Beach ferry was late. It was dead calm so it hadn't been cancelled due to high seas (it goes past the heads). I'm thinking there were security checks.

Walking away from Ferry Street, I tried to photograph a rosella in a golden bottlebrush. Don't see many golden bottlebrushes. Then another drunk hit on me. Bloody hell.

In the next street there was a paramedic rescue truck outside someone's house. Paramedic's nipped home for a midday shag, I thought. But then my doctor pulled up and hurried into the house and an ambulance showed up as well. Some Dear Old Thing slipped in the bath and got wedged under the taps or something. Poor bugger.

(Big version) There's a nice old cottage under there somewhere.

Next to that house was a seventies revamp of a forties house that was a classic example of When Bad People Happen To Good Architecture. At the end of the street there was a pleasant casement window on a house from around 1900. Despite a few seventies add-ons, the house was largely intact and in pretty good nick. I saw easily a dozen old cottages under seventies and eighties renovations.

(Big version)

Today's walk was mainly forties and seventies again with continuous building along the foreshore from the seventies on. One place on the foreshore had a big double size block of land with plenty of big old trees. The house was maybe 1920s and it was in great nick. Freshly painted and not a house that was going to be flogged to real estate sharks any time soon. Looked like it'd been in the same family since it was built.

At the oval next to Blackwall Mountain there was an ugly blockhouse-style scout hall and an old guy chicking a stick for three big excited dogs. Further down towards the beach a large fluffy black elderly dog eyed me tiredly while its owner yacked over someone’s fence. I sat on the low wall on the traffic island. The road was wide there and a garden had been made down the middle of it in the eighties. Despite being done in the eighties it was tasteful and low-key. There was a sign welcoming you to Ettalong Beach with "Established 1830" under it. A forties van freshly painted in bright yellow went past. It had "Kevin's Removals" on the side. A Dear Old Thing sitting close to a heater was peering out her front window over a tangle of bird cages.

I went down past the white wooden Uniting Church (foundation stone "Laid by Mr Chas E Allen To The Glory Of God 28-11-'31"). The RSL war museum was closed. Bugger. "Tues & Thurs 9AM to 2PM". I'll make sure my next walk near there is a Tues or Thurs. They should have some interesting stuff.

Sat on a block of limestone at the beach end of Picnic Parade and put in a new film. The ferry was backing up to the wharf at Ferry Street. Quite a crowd got off it. I watched it move off and head for Pittwater. A couple of ducks were ducking under the water and splashing about.

On the last bit of today's walk there was a motel. When they're giving directions on the phone no doubt they say "you can't miss us". It's true. They've got a purple and orange paint job. Dude, the seventies are over already.

(Big version)

Got the bus home. In front of me Dear Old Thing #1 said to Dear Old Thing #2: "Wasn't that a terrible thing in London?"
Dear Old Thing #2 said: "Yes and the rain."
"What?"
"And the seat was so tiny you felt like you were being chopped up!"
"Um. Okay."

Other than that people were pretty quiet. It's been a crap week.

Next walk

Walk #30 - Pines & palms

2006-01-19T20:14:00.000-08:00

(Walked 4th of July 2005)

Pretty warm walk today. Very slightly humid weather. Started out under a clear sky and by the time I was home two hours later it was overcast. Doesn't look like rain though.

(Big version) Built in the last 5 years or so. A good example of an updated classic.

Forties, fifties and seventies houses today. With a few recent reno's and new brick houses with Federation repro details. Another mix of retirees, newly married yobs and yuppies.

A couple of the seventies houses were ghastly. One chocolate brick place had taken out the hideous yellow bottle-end glass round their front door and replaces it with crappy Art Deco leadlight windows. The effect was startling. On another street there was another chocolate seventies place. This one was suffering from TMIL (Too Much Iron Lace). Iron lace looks great. On terrace houses and small Federation cottages. On a chocolate brick seventies place with too many palms it looks dead stupid. There were also nylon lace curtains. I wouldn't set foot in that house if they were giving way money trees.

There were a lot of pines and palms and small hairy dogs today. One mutt was walking its owner up near the golf course. Its owner was a Dear Old Thing who'd forgotten to take out a couple of curlers behind her ear. She wandered back and forth across the road after the dog, calling it plaintively. The dog just stared at her and piddled on fence after fence. It also tortured several large dogs behind fences by standing in their driveways and staring at them for several seconds. Then it would pretend it was leaving, sniff and piddle on their gardens then go back for another stare. One dog was so enraged I thought it'd swallow its own tongue or something.

Came across an overgrown patch of plants on a verge. There was a stalky plant with bunches of narrow red bell-shaped flowers and a geranium. It was fair game I tell you. sitting out there on the verge all unowned. I ripped it out, whipped out my trusty plastic bag, stuffed the geranium in it roots and all and legged it down the street.

(Big version)

The wooden thingy on the roof was all handcarved.

At a corner with lots of pines and palms there was a Polynesian hut in someone's backyard. Complete with carved wooden roof beam. Not what you'd expect to find in suburban Australia but a pleasant surprise. Took a couple of photos. Which will be up next weekend.

A couple of the streets backed onto the golf course. I peered through the fence and realised that the long lagoon on the gold course is not connected to the paperbark forest after all. There's two lagoons, the smaller one being the one in the forest. I walked along beside the forest again. A kookaburra was quietly practising its evening chuckle and a magpie was zooming in and out of the trees like something out of Top Gun. Apart from the distant shouting of teenagers insulting each other, it was quiet and peaceful. I disturbed a bunch of ducks and they quacked off onto the lagoon. Hope the photo of that turns out.

It was only four streets but I feel like I've done a much longer walk. Which I have come to think of it. I walked all four streets twice, doubling back on my tracks to avoid walking along Ocean Beach Road with its smelly traffic. So I s'pose it was a fairly long walk. And now I'm off to satisfy the appetite its given me.

Next walk

Walk #29 - Tea tree forest

2006-01-19T19:46:00.000-08:00

(Walked 1st of July 2005)

Overcast again now but when I set off on my walk this morning it was a clear as a bell. Just as well I took a jumper. It got overcast and windy again towards the end of my walk and my neck got quite chilly.

(Big version) Wagstaffe, Lobster Beach and Box Head on the left. Barrenjoey Head in the middle. Lion Island and Patonga Ridge on the right. Palm Beach ferry in the centre. And that bloody seagull followed me all the way along the foreshore.

(Big version)

Went along The Esplanade from Ettalong. The sun was still out then and I got off a whole roll of film on that one street. Mostly on the beach actually. There's numerous foot access thingies down to the beach and I kept nipping down them. Think I got a nice one of Lion Island. It was looking very close and was nicely lit by the sun against the background of Patonga Ridge.

(Big version)

Came across a tiny forest of tea trees on the dunes. A native Australian tree with tiny tough leaves and white flowers. There were maybe two dozen trees in a rough rectangle and within the forest the sand was smooth and almost bare. It was pleasantly shady with a nice spot to sit (on a plastic bag) and look at the sun on Lobster Beach opposite.

Watched the ferry leave Ferry Street and skirt round the sandbars then off to Pittwater. Must've been the Palm Beach ferry. There's normally only one sandbar and its size fluctuates according to the weather. Today there was two sandbars because of all that wind yesterday. The spray was jumping high over at Barrenjoey Head and on Lion Island and at the base of the cliff on the end of Patonga Ridge. The edge of the surf was littered with soggy bits of debris. Lost hankies, a piece of fishing net, that sort of thing. All along the footpaths there were small twigs and the ends off branches and, inexplicably, a pair of clean blue knickers. I say in explicably because they were too close to the beach to have blown off a clothesline and ended up there. Relic of a midnight shag on the beach perhaps.

Came across a dog and owner where Ettalong Beach comes to a corner and Umina Beach starts. The owner was friendly and yummily upholstered. The dog was a lovely four year old called Seth. Staffordshire terrier crossed with pitbull. He was playing soccer in the surf but took the time to look into the lens and grin at me. Hope the pictures of him came out.

(Big version)

Back up to the road after giving Seth's ball a few kicks, and round onto Broken Bay Road. All along The Esplanade the houses are 1940s and 1970s to the present. A mixed bunch. Broken Bay Road is the same but with more Dear Old Things quietly fossilising behind the lace curtains and jungle-like lawn.

Between The Esplanade and Broken Bay Road there's a park marked on my map. With the map being 15 years old and land near the water selling like it does, I was expecting the park to be gone. But it was still there. Well maintained and well used too by the look of it. In the middle there was a small carpark, a brick loo and a small two-storey clubhouse. To the right of that it was all grass with a few small clumps of trees and a slide in the far corner. Good spot to run a dog or a small child to exhaustion. To the left it was all asphalt netball courts. There was pedestrian access from beside the clubhouse to The Esplanade and a view of the end of the tea tree forest and, beyond that, across to Kourung Point at Wagstaffe. A rather pleasant little view.

I sat on the bench in front of the clubhouse for a few minutes. It was clouding over again but there was still some sun. Every backyard that backed onto the park between Lagoon and Palm streets had a few palms in it. (No mystery how Palm Street got its name). The name of the park was Lemon Grove. Not many lemon trees to be seen in the backyards facing it. Perhaps there was an orchard there once though I don't know how lemon trees would do so close to the beach. Maybe someone just fancied the name. Made a note for my big research trip to the library.

The sound of the wind in the palms was excellent. I let it fill up my ears and the sun warm my face while I gazed over the netball courts to Blackwall Mountain. It's actually a triangular hill but from the park it looks squarish. It wasn't so far away that I couldn't see the big old gums tossing in the wind on top of it. On the right hand end of the Mountain the Club loomed. Blot on the bloody landscape that thing. It's not terribly offensive in itself. It's white and has many many balconies. Nothing out of the ordinary for a beachside hotel and club-for-all-seasons. But it's the biggest thing on the Peninsula and it's too bloody white and you can see the bastard for miles.

Anyways, my neck was getting cold again at the back where the sun couldn't get at it. I got back on my feet. There were two more pedestrian access thingies at the Mountain end of the park. I went up the steep soggy one. Not slipping on the wet leaves and sliding back down on my face was a near thing. My shoes were still squelching for a few dozen yards after it.

It wasn't far to the end of Broken Bay Road. As I came round the corner my bus was at the stop and I ran about 20 yards to get it. Ten minutes later my face was still warm from that run. But when I started this walkies thing in March a run like that would've had me sagging against my fellow pedestrians with the blood pounding in my ears and them asking if I needed an ambulance.

Next walk

Wet & windy

2006-01-19T19:43:00.000-08:00

We had a bit of hard rain here. Ten minutes of it pissing down. Love the sound of the rain.Then the wind got up again. It seldom blows steadily in the Sydney region. It gusts and comes in waves through the trees. From one of my windows I've got quite a long view and I stood there at morning tea time with my hands wrapped round a steaming cuppa (cup of tea) watching the gusts come and the trees bow and sway like dominoes.

[UPDATE, January 2006: Trees bowing and swaying like dominoes? What was I on?]

Next walk

Veranda porn

2006-01-19T19:35:00.000-08:00

A snippet from my reading in June 2005:

Our move next to Squid's place came about in an odd way. It happened that in the previous year my grandmother had died, leaving my grandfather living alone in his old wooden house on the cliffs; the place in which my mother had lived as a girl. It was just before Christmas 1928 that Grandfather became peculiar.

Anyway, when he became peculiar my mother had to go back and forth to 'Thermopylae' to clean the place and cook him an occasional meal. He usually muttered and growled at her while she worked, or else sat out on the veranda to watch for passing ships; he had been an old Port Phillip pilot and before that a master in sail.

This of course didn't hurt anyone, and no one minded when he fitted the veranda with navigation lights and a binnacle. Complaints from Peters and other neighbours only began when he found a megaphone and used it to roar and blaspheme at ships out in the channel.

It was decided I would sleep under Grandfather's window on the north veranda, which was the side of the house least exposed to the weather. Even though thick tea-tree protected it, there were nights when the canvas blinds flapped wildly and the roar of waves sounded so close that I would find myself dreaming we were out a sea. These were the nights Grandfather was likely to get up and take the helm. Once or twice on windy moonlit nights I saw him, beard and hair blowing, pyjamas clinging about him, the ghost of a captain on a ghostly ship. The only way to handle him then was for my father to run outside crying, "Ready to take over, sir." Then Grandfather would relinquish the wheel and allow my mother to lead him back to bed.

But these nights weren't frequent. Usually the Bay was calm and from my bed I could hear the lapping of waves on the beach at the base of the cliffs. Sometimes on these still nights I could hear through the thin wall Grandfather debating Darwinism with himself, taking first one side and then the other. Darwin always lost.

Veranda porn from one of my very favourite books. All The Green Year by D.E. Charlwood. I'd post the whole book for your reading pleasure but copyright doesn't run out until 70 years* after the author's death and it appears Charlwood ain't even dead yet.

* It's really death+50 years but we got shafted last year in the American-Australian trade deal and now George Bush dictates copyright law on Australia authors is death+70 years. Thanks a lot, weasel.

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Walk #28 - Views

2006-01-19T19:09:00.000-08:00

It started to rain just as I got off the bus. Bastard! But it wasn't heavy and the sound of it on my brolly (umbrella) was nice. Today's walk was steep nearly all the way. The bus dropped me off right at the end of the street and I started straight into it.

This was my second hill walk. It was a beautiful day. Sun and rain. Soft greens and greys and the whispy white of the low clouds.

I was puffed pretty quick but I was walking uphill as soon as I got off the bus. Walking up those steep streets was a good workout and the view was well worth it.

(Big version) Run-off from heavy rain makes temporary waterfalls all over the hillsides.

(Big version) This house was on three levels plus the carport. There was a steep wooden staircase up from the carport to the middle level.

The rocks in the bottom right corner are local rock spilt open by blasting. The red stuff on the rocks is sawdust washing down off the garden round the back.

(Big version) Making room for the road. Most of the big rocks are too bloody heavy to shift so the bits in the way are just blasted off. Beautiful colour inside.

(Big version) Looking along Veron Street. The hill in the mist is Daleys Point. Between it and the Peninsula is The Rip. Which is a narrow passage of water over which the Rip Bridge sits. The Rip Bridge gets you to St Huberts Island and up to Terrigal on Empire Bay Drive and the Scenic Hwy.

This is Veron Street from a different angle. That bulky hill is Blackwall Mountain. The lower hill behind it must be Davistown.

It was a very rainy day. It stopped by the time I got to the top of my walk. The view was beautiful. White clouds low over the Coast, the soft greys of the heavier clouds, the greens of the trees and hills.

In another photo (which didn't #@$%! turn out) there was also a dull silver as tiny bit of sun came out and gleamed on the flat water in Phegans Bay. Which is to the left of this photo.

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Next walk

Walk #27 - Paperbark Forest

2006-01-19T18:49:00.000-08:00

(Walked 25th of June 2005)

It was raining all night and most of this morning. I bunged my walkies kit and a brolly (umbrella) in my satchel and waited for the sky to clear. It cleared just after lunch and I shot out of the house like a scalded rabbit.

(Big version) Came across this beautiful little forest on one of my walks. On its left is the golf course and on its right a quiet lane. Had no idea it was there. One of the hidden treasures of suburbia.

(Big version) Up at the end of the third street was the back of the golf course. Running along the fence of the golf course was the Everglades Wetland Reserve. It was beautiful. A narrow slice of paperbark forest. I wandered into it to get a photo. There were a few worried cheeps then it went dead quiet and still and I could feel dozens of birdy eyes on me.

(Big version) The street alongside is called a boulevard but it's neither a street nor a boulevard. It's a lane plain and simple. Lane width, surfaced in loose bluemetal. A lane. But the forest was so beautiful and unexpected I broke my strict No Lanes Yet rule and walked it.

(Big version) The forest is narrowest here. The light you can see through the trees is the golf course.

(Big version) The sun was halfway down the sky (it was 2PM) and the lane was in full shade. The sun sparkled on the lagoon on the other side of the forest and glinted off the wet leaves. It smelt fresh and pleasantly damp. The birds went about their business again and the trees blocked the sounds of golfers. The lane was nearly a kilometre long (0.62 miles) and I felt like I was on a country road. It was such a great find. I'd never have known about it if I hadn't started this walk-every-street thing.

Next walk

Walkies #26 - One, Two, Three

2006-01-19T18:46:00.000-08:00

(Walked 24th of June 2005)

Three little streets today. Went down to Whatsit Street and knocked off them off while I was there.

Next walk

Reverting to type

2006-01-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted 24th of June 2005)

Watched Lost last night. It's orright. Nothing else on the telly after Space Odyssey. Anyways. I wanna see Said and Doctor Guy going at it. Said is a nummy treat and Doctor Guy would definitely cope better after a good rogering.

Next walk

Walk #25 - Brass Monkeys

2006-01-19T18:30:00.000-08:00

(Walked on 18th of June 2005)

How cold does it get here in winter? Not very is the short answer. In a few spots in Australia there's snow so obviously it gets pretty cold there. The Blue Mountains outside Sydney get snow once every ten years and a few times I've felt the wind coming down off it and frozen half to death.

Despite the cold I got a bit sweaty today. Must've walked a bit too briskly. My right foot was giving me a bit of stick when I started out but it's fine now. Just two small streets today. Last two loitering in the middle of a walked section.

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Next walk

Stats & stuff

2006-01-19T18:03:00.000-08:00

I've now done an eighth of my walkies area, counting Wednesday’s walk.

Wednesday's was 9 kilometres. The longest one before that was 3 kilomteres. So I tripled the previous distance. Excellent!

My start date was the 1st of March this year and my planned finish date is either the 1st of September or 1st of December. Depends on how hot spring is. Spring starts on the 1st of September.

This every-street thing is excellent motivation. I loathe exercise for its own sake. Goal-orientated exercise I like. I've already got walks planned for the next five winters. I'll probably walk in summer too but Australian summers can be pretty fierce, even at six in the morning.

Apart from more walks around here, I'm planning a few in the 19th century parts of Sydney. Which are mainly round the Harbour and along the railway line to Strathfield.

The Rocks - the port's cheapest area in the 19th century. Damp and dodgy landlords were a problem and there was an outbreak of the plague in The Rocks in 1900.

Woollahra - built mostly in the late 19th & early 20th centuries from what I can tell. Been through it a couple of times and it's rather pleasant.

Paddo, Darlo & Surry Hills - 19th & early 20th century light industry & working class housing. Surry Hills is still full of clothing factories & warehouses.
Woolloomooloo - commercial & naval docks area & where the Powerhouse Museum's silent film of The Sentimental Bloke was filmed.

Chinatown - speaking Cantonese since the 1920s.
The Cross - now full of knocking shops & strip clubs.

Woolahra's 12 kilometres square and the others are about the same. Where I'm walking now is 19 kms square and the streets not quite as densely packed.

I've been working on a fic set in and around Darlo so there would be a good place to start. Also, Darlo, Paddo, Surry Hills and Newtown are queer Sydney and I can start with the queer history walks set up by The Brothers & Sisters.

It takes about an hour by train from my place to Darlo. I'll have to start bloody early in the morning to walk the streets of Darlo et al. Do it in winter and I'll want to avoid the crowds and cars splashing me. Do it in summer and I can use the shade from the buildings but I'll need to avoid the crowds pushing me into the sun.

There's also Parramatta where a farm was set up not long after white peeps started settling Australia in 1788. I've been to Elizabeth Farm and Government House at Parra. Very nice. I particularly fancied the wee reading/ letter-writing room at the end of the veranda at Elizabeth Farm. It was about eight feet square. Plenty of room for a desk, chair and couch but not enough room for someone to stay and hassle you. Heaven.

Okay. I'm off to sit in the sun on the balcony having my lunch.

Next walk

Walk #24 - The long march

2006-01-19T17:53:00.000-08:00

(Walked on 15th of June 2005)

My feet are killing me and I'm so thirsty I could drink a pub dry. The old quadriceps are a bit twangy too, due to a 30% gradient at the tip of one of the longer streets. Maybe a bit more than 30. Dunno. Each house was at the level of the previous house's roof. How steep is that?

(The rest of this post is unretrievable but memorable. I walked across the width of the Peninsula, had a bit of lunch by the beach and walked back. 9 kilometres (5.6 miles).

Bourke Road I remember particularly. It's a long straight road halfway down the Peninsula. Good pavements but not much shade. Even though it was winter it was a bright sunshiny day and I was pretty warm by then from walking. I remember my feet were hot and aching a bit. I just put my head down and zoned out, trudging along with my mind elsewhere.

After Bourke came Ryans Road. That goes up past the back of the High School and I could hear faint yells from the school grounds. At the ridge end Ryans Road curves and meets up with Veron Road. My plan was to walk up the short hill at the end of Veron Road. By the time I got there I was as hot as hell and my feet ached like mad. I looked up the slope of the end of Veron Road. It was steep and I was very tempted to leave it for another day. But I thought, Nah, it'll be a pain in the bum coming back for it, I'll do it now. So I went up it. I was sweating like a pig when I got to the top and the view wasn't as good as all that but doing it was good.

Don't remember the rest of the walk home but I remember how much my feet hurt. It was a bloody long walk for someone who'd barely been able to totter round the block in March of the same year and it gave me great satisfaction.)

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Next walk

Walk #23 - I'm livin' in the seventies

2006-01-19T17:42:00.000-08:00

(Walked on 12th of June 2005)

Stepped back in time again today. Back to the seventies again. Self-conscious houses with small windows and dark brick. Or white brick. Which always looks tacky. It was a very quiet afternoon. The scent of sausages and sauce and the warm sun made it feel like a summer Sunday.

A tall bloke with a big gut and a small head was watering his lawn in violation of the new water restrictions. The drain marked on my map next to the primary school is actually a strip of bush with a creek in it. Found a cul-de-sac not marked on my map and, going into it, suddenly jumped forward 30 years into the noughties. Which is why it's not on my 1990 map. There was a lovely example of Federation revival in it. Not too overdone and had the appropriate garden too. Lavender, roses and so on. Cottage garden sort of thing.

(Big version)

Across the road was another cul-de-sac. This one going up to the foot of the ridge. It was back to the seventies in there. And dead quiet except for 20 cents clacking round in the pocket of something in a washing machine in the back of a garage. The first couple of houses were in the sun still. The end of it was in the full shadow of the ridge. At the end there was a rather twee house trying hard to look like some Swiss alpine thingy. Looked bloody silly against the gums. Beside it was open access to the hillside of the ridge. Most of the hills round this way are too steep for being built on and this one was no exception. The bit in the cul-de-sac was about a sixty degree slope and covered in ferns and rocks. It was dank and damp and menacing and smelt of mould.

(Big version)

Stood there looking up at a pumpkin-coloured house on top of the ridge. Had a faint feeling of dread. Not due to the colour, though was pretty dreadful. It was the thought of taking my out-of-condition quadriceps up to the top of that ridge. Still, it'll do me no harm in the end and none of the roads go straight up. They wind a bit and there's some hairpin bends and so on. And when I get up there I'll be able to see clear up to Gosford and maybe up to Tuggerah Lake.

It was warm enough in the sun that I was wearing a short sleeved shirt but in the shade it was cold. Standing there in the shade on a slightly hilly road with the ridge ahead of me it felt like I was in the mountains. Might go up to the Blue Mountains some time this winter.

Then I went along to the other end of Shoalhaven. Which overlooks the railway underpass and that slightly creepy nursing home. It's too neat and quiet. Probably just not fully inhabited yet. It's brand new and some of the little villas look empty.

From there it was downhill then back home on flat streets. A stout wheezy bloke lingered by his letterbox to say hi as I went past. Bit too eagerly, poor dear. I must've been the only person he spoke to all day.

No cuttings ripped off today. But I found two small geraniums in a shopping trolley. Roots and all. Bit of a strange scenario. I'm picturing a midnight raid, couple of blokes ripping up other people's gardens, getting sprung, grabbing most of the booty from the trolley and legging it off down the road.

It was a long walk today. One and a half hours. 50% more than any of my previous walks. By the time I started back I was desperate for a cuppa tea and something to eat. As soon as I got inside I bunged the kettle on and had a slice of bread with towering layer of marmalade on it.

My new shoes are doing fine. My feet are pretty tired still an hour after I've come home but they'll be fine in the morning.

Next walk

Walk #22 - Swamplands

2006-01-19T17:34:00.000-08:00

(Walked on 11th of June 2005)

The streets were pure 70s. Chocolate and white brick and tile. Chunky-pillared patios with massive brick barbies. Lots of grevillea, oleander, bottlebrush and a few rose gardens. Also a deep deep purple hydrangea. A rarity. A wide drain running between the streets where normally a lane might be found. Clusters of paperbarks here and there along it. Planted by the council to stabilise the ground. We export paperbarks all over the world for that very purpose.

(Rest of the post lost. Swamplands refers to the streets named Florida, Miami & The Everglades.)

Next walk

Clayton's walk

2006-01-19T17:11:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted 1st of June 2005)

A Clayton's walk is a walk you have when you're not having a walk. Some idiot tried flogging some non-alcoholic drink to Australians a few decades back. Like that was ever going to sell in a nation of pissheads.

Anyways, the name and the slogan stuck: "Clayton's. The drink you have when you're not having a drink" and we use it to take the piss out of pretty much everything. John Howard, the leader you have when you're not having a leader and so on. In this case it was a walk not contributing to my every-street walk so it was a Clayton's. God I'm long-winded this week.

(Big version) The sigh says "So close to transport!" and that's a train whizzing past behind.

So off I went on my Clayton's walk. Down to the river. Took a few photos and finished another film. Sat at a picnic table in the park and read for a bit. Nice warm sun on my face, the clicking of the coin-operated BBQ as it cooled down. Nice spot for a sausage sizzle.

Hardly a bird in the sky. The kookaburras are not noisy during the day and it was feeding time at the fish-n'chips beside the ferry so there was nary a pelican or seagull to be seen.

That feeding time thing is a rather bloody affair. Tourists shouting excitedly, small children screaming in fear as the pelicans open those huge beaks, someone getting too close and nearly losing a toe to a short-sighted seagull. All the fun of the fair.

Normally the pelicans squat on top of lightpoles along the foreshore or hang in the sky slowling circling upwards. It's thermals they're hanging in, by the way. Warm air rises in sort of funnels and large birds and sail-plane gliders make use of it to gain lift. We went gliding when I was a wee thing and I've looked out along a glider's wing several times and found an eagle looking back at me as we shared a thermal. They take a good long look at you then ignore you.

(Big version)

Wandered back after an hour or so. Found a flyer for a local garden shop in my letterbox. "Free delivery!" My favourite kind. I'm get the bus down there next week and see what they've got. Hopefully I'll be able to get my frangipanni from them and not have to trek up and down the Coast for it.

Off on a Walk walk tomorrow. When I trek off to pick up my orthotic thingies.

Next walk

Walk #21

2006-01-19T16:53:00.000-08:00

(Walked on 4th of June 2005)

Pooped. Might have a little nap in a bit. No, better have a coffee instead. It's great to get the sleep but afternoon nap's just results in confuzzlement for the rest of the day.

Longer walk today than for a couple of weeks. Still haven't got that sodding pedometer to work out how far I'm walking but it was half as much again compared to than the last one and about twice the three before that.

Took one whole photo. Then I ran out of film. Sodom and Gomorrah!

Saw another paved lane. That's maybe three paved lanes I've come across now. I'm not walking them yet. Saving them up for when I walk all the lanes, paved and otherwise. Which will be after I've walked all the streets.

Walked to my walk today. That's new. I've walked back from a couple of walks so far but now I'm well enough to walk to them then walk them. Admittedly I had a rest in between. Picked up a film and had a slushie while I looked at the photos. Which were crap, incidentally. Whatever I was doing to improve my photographic skills I've stopped doing.

Today's walk involved a couple of cul-de-sacs, a wrongly named road that terminated at the local high school and a wriggly road.

The map I'm using is from 1990. It's a real estate agent's map so it shows all the schools and public wharfs but not anything that happened after 1990. I'm now carrying about with me a wide selection of marker pens for colouring my map in with. black for the previous walk, green for the current walk and parks, blue for creeks and storm drains and roads "subject to flooding", and brown for public buildings like schools, hospitals and Progress Halls. So today I coloured in two of the schools marked and left the third one un-coloured. There's a block of units there now. Maybe two or three years old and fitting exactly onto the shape of land marked "P.S." on the map.

Anyways, I had a sticky at that patch of storm drain and swamp at the back of the Woolies carpark and it does indeed connect to the footy oval and to a short cul-de-sac as well. It's mostly paperbarks and pines and a few soggy ferns. Plenty of bird life even at 11AM. Twittering away happily to themselves.

Came across an elderly dog that was corgi-shaped except for having a narrower chest but was terrier-sized. Rather deaf owner, tall and bent over with osteoporosis. Classic case of the dog walking the owner.

The streets I walked today were mainly 40s & 70s houses and units. The school that's still there is rather pleasant. Blue wooden buildings with only one younger addition and that was fairly tasteful. Particularly for something done in the 70s. The school sign said "established 1884" and I'm thinking the main buildings were 1900 - 1920.

One batch of new units looked interesting so I wandered in. It looked moderately big from the road but once I was in there it was a maze of tiny streets. A whole village on its own. A retirement village in fact, though it just looked like standard units from the outside. In the centre there was a two-storey building with a caretaker's and a nurse's flat on top and a residents' centre underneath. I could see a heated indoor pool and I'll bet you ten bob there's a small dance hall with a piano in the corner, a photo of the queen and a list of war dead on the wall. I had a bit of an explore round the place. It was very pleasantly built and laid out. Plenty of privacy and no visible bins and so on. But dead silent with curtain twitchers, too-perfect gardens and the whiff of fertiliser ripening in the sun.

Down on the corner of that street there was a couple of ambos talking a Dear Old Thing into getting in the ambulance. I don't go past there often but every single time there's an ambulance at that house. You'd think the Dear Old Thing would be used to getting into it by now. She'd be what Reynolds over at Random Reality calls a frequent flyer.

On the other corner there's a house known as the log cabin. It's made from split logs but has a normal tin roof (actually corrugated iron but that's neither here nor there). When it was being built everyone was afraid it was going to look rather wanky and precious but as soon as the roof went on and the wood greyed in the sun it looked quite pleasant and low-key.

At the end of that street is the foreshore park. It goes all the way from the train station to the mountain. Sat there on the sea wall for a bit under a clump of pines. The tide was out and there was a tiny mangrove alone in amongst the oyster-covered rocks. Over to my right was the mountain (actually a hill but we make the best of what we've got) and behind that a ridge. With a bushfire along the top of it. The smoke was mostly white so almost all of the burning stuff was trees. Will keep an eye out for it on the news tonight. Then Spit Bridge in the middle distance and St Huberts and Rileys Islands and Saratoga in front of me and Pelican Island to the left.

Coupla of sports fishing boats zoomed past, making a late start of it. A pelican floated past a foot above the water, sailed over a private jetty and kept going out of sight. Tiny crabs and sea worms plopping occasionally in the mud. Still water with the blue winter sky reflected in it. The far off buzz of the fire brigade's chopper over the fire and the gentle slap of lazy waves against the jetties.

Hunger got me back on feet eventually. The other half of my walk was pretty similar re the streetscapes. A couple of old wardrobes and a dead stove on the curb. Must be time for the council truck to come round. A hedge of poinsettia in full and glorious red bloom. Some roses with a good perfume.

It was about an hour's walk, not counting the time spent on the foreshore. The sun was warm and I was bright red and sweaty by the time I got to the bus station. My shins are a bit achy still but nothing major. They'll be right by tomorrow. I was never expecting this walkies thing to be painless anyways.

Next walk

Walk #20 - Chainsaws At Midnight

2006-01-19T14:29:00.000-08:00

(Walked 3rd of June 2005)

After the podiatrist, I sat at the beach for a bit with the paper and the sound of the surf. Roughish sea today. Waves jumping high as they hit against the rocks at Barrenjoey Head and Lion Island.

The Esplanade is a street across the road from the beach. There's a narrow strip of dunes covered in marigolds and small trees bent by the wind then a footpath and the road. The houses along that road look out over the beach and across to Barrenjoey Head and, in the far distance, North Head at Sydney Harbour. So we're talking million dollar views. All the newer houses along there are two-storey and the second storey gets a clear view onto the water. Here and there a tree gets in the way of someone's ground floor view and that tree has had a rough and illegal trim. I imagine there's a conspiracy of silence on that street. "You hear that chainsaw, dear?" "Chainsaw? A midnight? You're imagining things."

Anyways, I wandered along The Esplanade. Seagulls pecking hopefully, small nervous dogs on leads, big boofy dogs grinning at me from the car-park, 50 year old surfer dudes in wetsuits and bare feet anxiously examining the surf.

(Big version)

At the Life Savers Club end of The Esplanade it's all 30s and 40s beach houses with extensions and cacti gardens. They're mostly inhabited by Dear Old Things who're out on the beach fishing in their underpants at 6AM every morning. A few of them have sold their backyards and are living it up on the proceeds. One of the 40s houses had two of those pencil pines in the front garden. Not the skinny pencil pines. These were the same sort of tree but short and fat. They were immaculately trimmed and obviously loved but they blocked 90%of the view.

The next block is 70s and 80s flats, some merely boring to look at, some hideous like only 70s architecture can be. Dark chocolate brick boxes with small windows and glass doors opening onto the balcony in the teeth of a gale. The 80s ones are mostly rather smug-looking and have too many walls of glass brick.

Then it's all 80s to the present to Barrenjoey Road. Glass and steel two-storey houses with massive balconies and four wheel drives in underground garages. On the corner where I turned to come back there's a hideous 70s block of flats with a few pine trees out the front. It's called The Pines, of course, and has a nice flat roof covered in deckchairs and ashtrays.

Behind it there's no bus depot. My map must be older than I thought because it says "bus depot" there and those units went up about two years ago. Pretty standard maisonette flats (2 up, 2 down). Nice big scented geranium growing against the wall. Yep, I nicked a bit. I'm not yet carrying a shovel and a lookout like your mother, Suzanne, but I'm perilously close to turning into my Nana.

Back on The Esplanade there was a crappy old block of flats ready for demolition. Growing on the verge outside its fence were a few dozen baby daisy bushes. I studied them for a bit and decided they were fair game so I ripped a few out and bunged them in a plastic shopping bag. They're my favourite kind. White with a navy centre. The biggest one got a bit bashed on the way back but it'll be right. They'll go nice with the lavender on my sunnier balcony. I'll bung them in a pot after my lunch. That geranium I nicked last week is looking a bit frostbitten so I've moved it to the north balcony too. The north balcony gets a bit of sun and a nice warming up in the mornings.

With the daisy added, I've now got daisies, lavender, geraniums, one succulent, one asparagus fern and the garlic chives. And the basil in the kitchen. It's mostly geraniums at the moment and in a couple of months it'll be mostly geraniums and lavender. I'll add that frangipanni tree in a bit but it'l stay mostly geraniums and lavender. They're hard to kill. After a couple of years it'll be a nice leafy green garden on the south balcony and a nice shady and fragrant one on the north balcony.

All along The Esplanade the verge grass was tiny clumps of marigold. The gardens were filled with cacti and jade plant, lavender, daisies, oleander, hibiscus and hakea. All tough seafront plants. There's bugger all trees along there, what with the views and everything. But a block back the trees are the usual mix of native and European.

Where-ever Hollywood makes some movie on the beach here they bring all these bloody palm trees with them and make with the Caribbean music (I'm talking to you, Jackie Chan, re First Strike). It's bloody irritating and confuzzles the tourists no end. Far North Queensland aside, Australian beaches have pines not palms. (On a side note, First Strike was filmed on the Gold Coast (Queensland) and in the snowfields at Perisher (NSW or the ACT) and we had great fun shouting out "gum tree!"during the bits that were s'posed to be in the Ukraine.)

The wildlife board at the beach informs me those owls I occasionally see in the midnight hours are boobooks. I think they're silent. Will look them up some time. They like the paperbark trees and stringybarks. So do possums.

There's a gazillion different types of possums in this country. The ones round here are mainly small-to-large cat sized ones that like to land like elephants on your roof at 2AM and the tiny ones that live on nectar and are the size of your hand. I saw a cat-sized one a couple of years ago. Beautiful light grey fur and tiny yellow hands. Dead as a door nail at the bottom of a lamppost.

It was overcast when I got up this morning but by the time I finished my walk the clouds were lifting and it was even a bit muggy. Got the bus back from Whatsit Street with the world's gloomiest bus driver. Got my new orthotic devices and one knee is aching a bit now but that'll pass in no time.

Beasts

There's a lot of bush round here so we get plenty of native beasties coming into the suburban backyards.

bandicoots - cat-sized, pointy nose, eats spiders and seeds
crested pigeons - the crest is more like a spike, eats anything
blue-tongues - lizard, as long as your forearm, eats insects
flying foxes - red fur, cute faces, use vision not echo-location so they're pretty quiet
honeyeaters - birds, black and grey striated colouring, eat nectar from native trees
kookaburras - AKA laughing kingfishers, shy, move round in packs, noisy at dawn & dusk

Marine beasties from the info board at Umina Beach:

octopuses - smallish, no blue-rings as far as I can tell, blue-rings're poisonous
crabs - tiny buggers that scramble back into their holes in the sand as soon as you move
starfish
rock oysters
dead man's finger - seaweed, gives you the heebies if you see it reaching up for you from the bottom
Neptune's necklace - seaweed, looks like strings of beads, favourite for popping
blue mussels - yum, grown in farms all up and down the Central Coast, ditto oysters
cuttlefish
leatherjackets - fish, caught off local jetties in reasonable numbers

Next walk

Why why why?

2006-01-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted 29th of May 2005)

Had another pizza tonight. With juicy big bits of chicken and bacon and BBQ sauce. I'm a fool and an idiot. Took four days for the last one to claw and grind its way through my system.

Watched The Hidden History of Homosexual Australia on SBS the other night. That was good. Covered from 1788 (white settlement) to today in pretty good depth for a 1 1/2 hour programme.

Parkie's got Kevin Spacey on tonight. He's excellent. And Renee Zellweger who I think did Bridget Jones's Diary or whatever that movie was called. Didn't see it. Saw the adverts though, with her cute arse in them.

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Next walk

Walk #19

2006-01-19T14:19:00.000-08:00

(Walked 30th of May 2005)

A miniature walk. A single street. It's been puzzling me for a while. Every time I looked at the map I tried to remember seeing it. It was only a block long and not in a spot I normally go to. But now I know where the bastard is and what's on it. Which is half the point of this walking-every-street thing.

I saw it on my way to the shop last week and knocked it off on the way back. It was all light industrial, nine auto repairers, a whitegoods repairer, a swim school and a dance school. Hopefully the swimming school will have adult swimming times. It was indoors so it must be heated. Mmm... heated pool... I miss the old one terribly. They ripped it down (or up, since it was a pool) two years ago. They said it'd be finished in 2003. Yep, it's a council job. [UPDATE, the pool was finished mid-late 2005.]

Next walk

Walk #18

2006-01-19T14:09:00.000-08:00

(Walked 27th of May 2005)

Another short walk today. A side street off Whatsit Street. Got to bus down to the podiatrist then walked round the block from there and ended up back at Whatsit Street for another fat and juicy kebab. (Beef and chicken this time, Vamp. Are you hungry?)

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Next walk

Walk #17

2006-01-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

(Walked 23rd of May 2005)

Took a couple of photos. Some waterfowl on a lawn and a large dog that was peeing on everything. The light was pretty low and the shadows from the park long so there were few photo opportunities.

Today's was a bus-assisted walk. Caught the bus to my start point and walked back from there. The old feet are thrumming a bit and I got a bit warm but I'm good. Off to the podiatrist on Friday to have the feet examined. Check-up sorta thing and some advice on a new pair of walking shoes.

Today's streets were all 60s & 70s houses on one side and brand new villa units on the other side. The units were all right but a bit bland. Nicked a nice bit of geranium from outside a fence. Bit too pooped to plant that today. Got it in a plastic bag on the windowsill.

There's a bush park connecting those two streets. Didn't go through it. I can do parks later. A rather dank and overgrown creek ran out of the park and under the road next to the bus-stop. There were a few dogs running about and I saw that cute pup from number whatever. The owner's a bit of a grump.

The camellias are out in full bloom. On the bits of the bushes that get the sun anyways. Saw one covered in flowers on one side and just a few timid buds on the other.

Daylight Robbery

Only two cuttings nicked in the last fortnight. I'm walking the wrong streets obviously. Another pale pink/white rambling geranium on Friday and a variegated one today.

All the other recent cuttings are doing well. Not growing rapidly but who can blame them with the cold nights.

The lavender has left the intensive care ward and is now well and truly alive. It's put out some new branches. They're parallel to the ground. It's so long since I had a lavender I can't remember if that's normal behaviour for a lavender. But hey, as long as the bastard grows I'm good. [UPDATE, January 2006: Sadly, this lavender has kicked it but before it died it was a decent insect repellant and that's never a bad thing.]

Next walk

Walk #16

2006-01-19T13:40:00.000-08:00

(Walked 20th of May 2005)

Got rather warm. When I started out it was a bit chilly. I was heading to the beach so I wore a jacket. Roasted on my way back even though it was fully overcast by then.

Sat in the sun and dined al fresco on that fat and juicy kebab. Wore the last of it down my trousers. Such is life, as an infamous Australian said just before they shot him*.

Stood for a while on the viewing platform thingy at the beach. I'd say look-out but look-outs are high. This was all of 2 metres (6-7 feet) off the ground and bore signs of being a late night hangout for teenagers. Empty beer bottles and choc-milk cartons chucked into the scrub. There were a few surfer types out there on the water. The sea was rough and grey and the waves as big as they get round here. All the wave action was right next to the rocks at the point. Watched for a bit but there were no interesting accidents.

(Big version)

Another photo was of a house with a black painted tin roof. That's right, some idiot painted their tin roof black. Perhaps they intend to commit suicide by slow roasting come summer. [UPDATE, January 2006: This house now has a radio station's name on the roof so presumably they can afford enough aiconditioning to counter the roof thing.]

Picked up some of those baby wipes. Little packet for wiping my hands on after scratching dogs. Wiped my face whilst trying not to think of people wiping babies bums.

* Ned Kelly. Yep, same guy as in that movie Ned Kelly.

Next walk

Walk #15

2006-01-17T19:06:00.000-08:00

(Walked 16th of May 2005)

It was blowing cold at the beach. A rough sea coming in through the heads and black black clouds piled high in the sky. White container ship on the horizon waiting to go into the harbour. Not a soul on the beach, of course, not even a mad surfer dude. The life guard tower was shut up tight and the only other living soul was some guy in a van in the carpark eating a steaming sausage roll. Not the euphemism kind of sausage roll, unfortunately.

(Big version)

No zoom film cameras in the local pawn shop. Caught the bus there then walked down to the beach. Stood there for a few minutes with the hood up on my waterproof. Then went along an un-named lane and up another street to the next bus-stop along. Way too tired still to walk all the way along the beach.

Caught the bus from the beach to the station and did another tiny walk there. Past the footy oval then round the park by the jetty. As I was coming past the pub a car pulled up near the corner. The driver was so drunk his mates had to help him into the pub. At two o'clock on a Monday afternoon.

Waiting at the bus station to come home some unattractive bloke who smelt like a dead dog in a ditch tried to crack onto me.

Put another film in for developing. Will have to go up to Ginormous Shopping Centre sometime soon. There's a big pawn shop there. Definitely need a better camera to see me through until the digitals settle down in price and quality.

Pooped. Got a cuppa tea on the boil and this week's TV guide. Will read the reviews and drink my cuppa at the table next to the window.

Next walk

Walk #14

2006-01-17T18:41:00.000-08:00

(Walked 11th of May 2005)

Went to the flicks (movies) to see Hitchhiker's and incorporated a walk into that. Walked from the bus-stop to the cinema (theater), bought a ticket, then wandered down to the beach.

(Big version)

It was another unseasonally sunny autumn day. Sat on a rock in the shade and watched a couple of peeps paddle past in kayaks and the old guys fishing off the jetty right next to the No Fishing Off The Jetty sign. Bugger all breeze but the temperature was just right and the sound of the waves 20 feet in front of me was nice.

(Big version)

That new resort hotel thingy has been finished at last. Not too ugly as such thingies go but a hideous blot on the landscape when viewed from the beach. And that's only half of it. There's still a hole where they pulled down the original naff* brown building. Can't remember what they're putting in it. Another thingy to match the other thingy I expect. It better not be taller. The finished thingy is six bloody stories. [UPDATE, 18th of January 2006: The thingy they put in the hole turned out to be only a below-ground carpark, thank God.]

(Big version)

Hitchhiker's wasn't bad. Loved Zaphod. Better than the Zaphod in the TV series actually. His tight shiny underpants were a good touch.

I'm slowly eating up the streets. Decided not to eat up the lanes just yet. This area's riddled with lanes. They run behind the houses and some of them run for miles. So I'm sticking to paved streets until I've done every street then do the lanes separately.

It's dusk right now and the cockatoos are screeching overhead. I've closed the windows and, looking at the sky, there might be fog again in the morning.

* Naff is cheap plastic leather wallets that think they're as good as the real thing and chocolate brown 70s architecture.

Next walk

Walk #13

2006-01-17T18:33:00.000-08:00

(Walked 8th of May 2005)

The original post for this walk is retrievable. My notes say there were roses blooming, lemons ripening in the sun and a liquidambar's leaves were turning yellow.

(Big version)

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Walks #11 & 12

2006-01-17T18:11:00.000-08:00

#11

(Walked 4th of May 2005)

A short one. Part of a street I did most of the week before.

Took a coupla photos. One of a rose bush flowering with those tiny pink roses. Love those. They've got a decent perfume. Though last time I stopped to sniff some it was quite sunny and warm and I nearly snorted up a bee. [UPDATE, 18th of January 2006: This photo didn't turn out]

The plants are getting even more confused about what season it is. There's more roses out every day. Ditto hibiscus, azaleas, that purple flowering tree, frangipanis and heaps of others. I saw three poinsettias and one of them was starting to flower. Will be keeping an eye out for a flowering poinsettia and hibiscus to get in the same frame to illustrate the confusion.

Saw a few wee doggies. Including one that ran up to me and, after only a few seconds of scratching, rolled onto its back. Didn't even sniff me to see if I was safe. Its owner was so ashamed of its lack of caution. She had two others on a lead. One of them peed on everything while the other sat and regarded me solemnly.

Saw several cats basking in the warm spots on driveways. Including a chocolate point siamese with all its legs tucked right under it. Looked bloody awkward but cats seem comfy like that.

Also saw a treehouse. A kid-made one of old boards and splinters. A two-parter in a dense leafy tree. Very nice. Not as nice as that one in the Jane Austen movie Ang Lee directed but that was a luxury job.

My walkies mate has been suffering from aches & pains. The result of the sudden return to exercise and doing a few big walks rather than many small ones. It'll pass.

I'm still with the throbbing feet but I notice walking on the grass not the footpath makes a big difference and so does slowing down. Sometimes I find myself thumping along and getting all peeved and sore then I slow down and things stop hurting. Mind you, thumping along in my case currently means just fast enough to out-pace a snail

#12

(Walked 7th of May 2005)

The rain started last night and lasted until lunchtime. Beautiful grey sky and gentle rain falling straight down. Not a breath of wind. When it starts to rain I go into the bathroom and put my elbows on the windowsill and look out at the palm tree and listen to the rain on its leaves. I love the sound of the rain. If it's raining when I go to bed I'm out like a light and I sleep better.

As soon as the rain stopped today I got my shit together and off I went. I was incorporating a walk into a trip to the shops to put a film in for developing. Got my walk done, stayed dry, got to the shops, no film. @#$%*! But I got the paper and some corned beef for me sandwiches. Got quite warm in my jumper and waterproof. It looked like one of them chilly days but turned out to be almost warm by the time I ventured out.

Saw a black and white cat perched bolt upright on a car bonnet. Mostly black with a bowtie and eyebrows thing happening with the white. It stared at me perkily as I walked past but didn't budge. No doubt warming its bum on the heat from the engine. Further on there was a jack russel on a long lead. Its owner was moving along very slowly on a walking frame and the dog had time to explore every single inch of the terrain. It was wearing a bright blue and red doggy coat and looked ridiculous. Dwarfed by it. It wanted a scratch though and I gave it one. Friendly breed.

I don't see many big dogs out and about. Pity. I like a big dog. Preferably shorthaired and wearing a goofy expression. Though that big fluffy Malamute I see occasionally is nice. Very friendly.

Still no pedometer. Keep forgetting to look for one. Got no help with total road length from the library. They gave me the square mileage for my walkies area though. 19 square kilometres. Which is 7.34 square miles. Not a huge area but it's suburbia so there's plenty of roads to be walked.

Might do a similar walk tomorrow (I usually have a day between at least) and take that fucking film in to Kmart.

Downstairs and his drunken mates sound like they're shagging but are actually watching the footy. Tortured moaning and screams of "yes! yes! oh god yes!" are floating in through the window beside my comp.

Someone else nearby is listening to the races on the radio. The sound of the races always reminds me of my grandfather sitting in his shorts and sandals and long socks* at the kitchen table. The wireless would be on the end of the bench behind his ear and his foot would twitch every now and then as they came up the home straight. He never had much on the horses and sometimes nothing but he liked to listen to the call. He went to the dog track a fair bit when he was a young man and he and Gran once bet their last few pence on the dogs and won a month's rent. This was in the Depression so it was a big deal. Will tell you more about that soon in the family history thingy.

* Yep, he was a Pom (Brit). You can spot a Pom in Australia a mile off from the sandals-and-socks thing.

Another urban explorer

Linky is an ex-pat Pom living in Sydney. Like many Poms living in Australia he's obsessed by our beaches. I understand the obsession. I've seen pictures of Pommy beaches and they're crap.

Anyways, he's visiting them all and in alphabetical order. Sounds like fun. He's got some good pics and does reviews of the beaches. And he was interviewed on the radio. Cool!

Next walk

Walk #10

2006-01-17T18:01:00.000-08:00

(Walked 1st of May 2005)

Longish walk again. One & three-quarter hours. The old feet are thrumming painfully.

Might need new whatsits actually. Orthotic devices. Sounds metal and hinge-y no? But they're just hard foam slip-in insoles that're higher on one side than the other by a centimetre. Which is 3/8s of an inch in American. I've got unbalanced feet and so has 40% of the population apparently. Nothing major to get new ones. An hour at the foot doctor stepping on and off strange machines and ink pads and onto sheets of paper.

(Big version) Deadman's (Correa) Bay from Correa Bay Reserve.

Took a few photos. Went at 10AM so the light was much better. I've had no luck getting low light film. There seems to be a state-wide shortage at the moment. Bastards!

Beautiful day for walkies. Warm autumn sun and a not-too-cool breeze. Sat at a picnic table in a riverside park for a bit. There no-one there but one bloke wrangling a dingy onto the boatramp, some hopeful seagulls and a baby Morten Bay Fig tree. That'll be a big tree one day. They're used in parks all over Australia. Except in the desert bit in the middle but you knew that.

Saw an interesting cloud. Will bung it up on Flickr with a link from Cloud Spotters R Us. One keeps in good with one's fellow cloud spotters by regularly posting cloud porn links.

One of the things I'm enjoying most about this walk-every-street walk is getting acquainted with all the tiny parks and gardens and oddities that normally go unnoticed. Little snippets of public land at the ends of cul-de-sacs, public access paths between houses, that sort of thing.

Today I discovered a tiny boggy de facto carpark. Coupla blokes fishing from the mangrove flats there, dead mattress, kicked-in tv, a few beer bottles. Nothing major. Just a quiet little spot you'd barely notice from a car.

Walking also gives you time to gawk at other people's gardens as you go by. Saw a gazebo sort of thingy today. One of those things that're just a wooden frame with brick paving under them. It had a vine trained up over it and the branches on top in the sun were ablaze with beautiful bright pink flowers.

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Walk #9

2006-01-15T14:20:00.000-08:00

(Walked 27th of April)

Got home from my walk red in the face, all tuckered out, bottom of my feet thrumming slightly in protest. It was a big one. Twice as far as my average so far.

It was actually only a 25 - 30 minute walk for a fit healthy person and far far shorter than many walks I've done in the past. But it took me an hour and I nearly fell asleep in my dinner afterwards.

It was mostly along main roads so it wasn't very interesting. Didn't take any photos or scratch any dogs. Went past the fainting lady dog but it didn't wake up and I didn't want to scratch it. I was going to stop off at the next corner and get an icecream. Which I did. One of them choc-milk onna stick jobs.

I wanted a weiss bar but they were three bucks. Admittedly it was the petrol station shop and they can charge pretty much whatever to the SUV wankers but three bucks! Bugger that. I'll buy a pack from the supermarket. Weiss bars are the best. A slab of pulped frozen fruit with a strip of frozen yoghurt along one edge. Bloody delicious.

Anyways. No photos were taken. (See: wasn't very interesting.) But I saw that weird earless-looking dog again and achieved a decent sized walk without keeling over in the street. When does my medal arrive?

Polished off a long street nearby. I'd be fun to walk the main roads from end to end in one go but I'm so not up to that at the moment. One day I'm going to walk all the way round my designated walk area. On a cool day. With a support car idling along behind me. Or perhaps an ambulance.

That Caleb Smith bloke gets heaps of press for his walk. I'm jealous. Well, a bit. Not sure I'd want my mug in the paper. (American readers, mug is face.) There's a link over at Suzanne's blog to his latest newspaper appearance. And you should congratulate her too, on finishing Highway 180. Go Suzanne!

Next walk

Walk #8

2006-01-15T14:14:00.000-08:00

(Walked 23rd of April)

Took pics of a red cattle dog I've seen a few times before. It's very quiet, suspiciously so for a cattle dog, and kept looking over its shoulder at the house before sniffing me and my camera. It was rather peeved to find the camera wasn't edible but seemed to enjoy having its pic taken.

(Big version)

Also got a couple of the puppy round the corner. The one that lays over the fence like a fainting Victorian lady. It's grown another 20% in the last couple of months. Hope it slows down soon or it'll end up the size of a bloody horse. Still got no idea of its breed. Probably another cross breed. They seem to be everywhere.

(Big version)

The occupant of a flat a few doors down from me got a puppy. Very cute. It was at the window whimpering to be let out to play when I was in the carpark. Floppy ears, white with medium brown, shorthaired. Very familiar but I couldn't name its breed either. I wish I still had the breed recognition skills I learnt from my grandparents as a kid.

Ripped a couple of substantial cuttings off a geranium growing close to the curb on my walk. One of those ones with sharp-looking leaves and a deep purple flower. My mother used to have one of them down the side of the house.

My other stolen cuttings are doing well. The soil in their pots is still damp from that lovely soaking rain a few days ago. The rambling one looks like it'll open another bud or two.

Saw a small frangipani on my walk and was a bit tempted to rip it out of the ground and leg it off down the road. But I'll wait and buy the biggest one I can get and have its shade to sit under next summer.

Nip over to Catron County Walk and cheer WanderingFeet on. She and her walking companions have only 18 more miles of a particular highway in New Mexico to walk. They’re doing a 500 mile walk. My own walk rather pales in comparison.

Next walk

Walk #7

2006-01-15T14:06:00.000-08:00

(Walked 17th of April 2005)

Went this afternoon. Sunday. Took a photo of some ducks and their tracks in the black and grey sand of a tiny beach. When I'm all fit and shit I'll go walking at 6AM when the light is good for photos. In the late afternoon the sun's too low.

(Big version)

Found a bush park so small it's not on my map. It had water access too. White sand beach this time with mangroves starting to poke up through the sand. If it doesn't get enough use it'll be all mangroved over in a few years.

One street was almost all 1920s - 50s holiday houses. All with water access. One of the houses was tiny. The backyard was as big as yer hankie and the water frontage was maybe seven metres (about 23 feet) across and had a blue kayak on the back veranda. How good would that be? Small house yeah, but water access! I'd be out there in the kayak before breakfast. Bloody beautiful.

Saw a beautiful puppy. Don't know what breed. Light brown, shorthaired and going to be a big dog one day. It came bounding out of its backyard and cuddled up to me while I scratched it. The owner was a sour bugger.

View from Woy Woy train station.

Mushrooms have been popping up in the last few weeks. They grow here and there in people's backyards and on the verge. Usually button mushrooms and those big flat ones you get at the supermarket. There were some growing outside the fence at my old place. I had to be quick to pick them before the early morning dog walkers got them. Saw a couple of poisonous ones today. Dark brown on top and bright yellow underneath. No surprise they hadn't been taken.

Next walk

Walk #6

2006-01-15T13:56:00.000-08:00

(Walked 14th of April 2005)

God, I'm whacked. Walked twice this week and this walk was maybe 20% further than the others. But the doctor gave me the all-clear re the flu today so I'll soon be able to walk further now without stopping for a wheeze. Woo hoo!

(Big version)

Almost every hibiscus was flowering, some roses were and some of the impatiens. Must be the warm sunny afternoons we’ve had over the last week.

Met a couple of chihuahua crosses. Bloody things are everywhere! One of them was corgi coloured (golden with a touch of ginger) with corgi eyebrows and shoulders and a corgi-ish snout. The other one might've had some terrier in it. The owner had got them from the pound and didn't know.

There's a lot of dogs round here. Walking in the afternoon I don't see many of them out and about. Most of the dogwalking is done early in the morning. But I see plenty of them sitting on verandas and watching the world from behind gates and fences. Some of them run to the fence and bark for attention and I stop and scratch them in those hard-to-reach spots. The cats are rather more timid, of course. They sit there staring at me with that fuck-you look cats do so well. I love them.

(Big version)

Next walk

Walk #5

2006-01-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

(Walked 11th of April 2005)

My notebook says it was an overcast day with plenty of birds about.

(Below is one of the reasons I chose walking instead of some other form of exercise.)

That New York City walk guy's site was the catalyst. His walking every street in Manhattan interested me. You would definitely feel like you knew a bit about your local area after that. So I got off my arse and started my walk of every street of my local area on the 1st of March this year, which was the start of Autumn. And now a mate has joined me. Not walking with me here but walking in Chicago. We're keeping each other on track. As Shauny points out: "Exercise is no fun unless There's some sort of petty challenge involved."

Next walk

Walk #4

2006-01-15T13:40:00.000-08:00

(Walked 1st of April 2005, April Fool's Day)

Don't remember much of this walk. It was a pretty miserable time. I took a few photos to send to Gran and that's about it.

(Big version)

My Gran had a pretty big stroke in mid March and I'd spent most of my time since shuffling from the medications cupboard to my inbox, emailing my relatives and on the phone with them. Gran was like most stroke victims, barely conscious, not taking much in. I was stuck over here in Woy Woy (she was in Perth) with the doctor still saying I was too sick myself to fly over and if I risked it my germs would kill Gran anyways. She died in her sleep on the 29th of March, when I was at the doctor again being told I was still too sick to fly.

Death and guilt

Got Gran a big sheaf of native flowers. Banksia flowers and kangaroo paws and that sort of thing. She had a bunch of dried natives in her living room for as log as I can remember. Though presumably not the same bunch all those years.

Sobbed like a baby in the florist. I expect they're used to that sort of thing. Florist Lady was most helpful and very good at interpreting words snuffled into a damp tissue.

The funeral's Friday. I'm not going. Yes, I want to. I can't go for the same reason the doctor's been on about every visit in the last three weeks. I'm not on death's door but I'm too bloody sick to spend 5 hours in a metal tube in the sky breathing in the germs of 400 other peeps.

I don't feel as sick as all that. I feel like I've got my usual ailments and the flu (which I have) but it's a low grade flu that feels like it'll be gone tomorrow. But on the other hand, I've had it for more than [five] weeks now and every time I've been back to the doctor he's started in with the "in your current condition...blah blah technical mumbo jumbo...depressed immune system...blah blah blah...period of several weeks...possible pneumonia or bird flu if you go ... blah blah blah".

That's where the guilt comes in. I rang Gran's place the day she had the stroke (the 14th, her 91st birthday) and Jean answered and told me she was in hospital and I've been sitting here ever since trying to get well enough to 1) have enough voice to talk to her on the phone, 2) get over there to see her without killing her by breathing on her and then, 3) try to get over there before she died once it was obvious she didn't have long anyway.

She died Tuesday morning while I was at the doctor. She'd been recovering then she started to go downhill rapidly on Sunday night. The doctors called in all my aunts and uncles and asked them if they wanted a no resusitation order on her. They said she'd probably just fall asleep and not wake up and have a painless death. As she'd just turned 91, loathed causing a fuss and had cancer & a dicky heart as well, a no resusitation order was the way to go. I've got no problem with the decision.

So with the downturn in her condition the balance tipped and it became a good idea to visit even with the germs. But then she died before I could even book a ticket. And now I'm swinging back and forward like a pendulum between relief I didn't kill her with my evil germs and guilt that I didn't get there in time.

And, just to add the confusion and general crappiness, there's also some anger.

My aunt Jean is a sensible no-nonsense person. With minutes of getting back from the hospital the day Gran had the stroke, she emailed the news to all the far-flung members of the family, including me. She'd already rung everyone in Perth from the hospital, including my parents. Everyone knew what had happened and that it was pretty severe.

But then there's absolutely no word from my parents about it. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Not a squeak. Not one iota. Then I find out yesterday my mother has had a go at another aunt for keeping me up-to-date with news about Gran. Yep, you read that right. She's angry with my aunt that she (my aunt) gave me news about my dying grandmother. Jesus Fucking Christ. Where do you start with how wrong that is? I'm not even going to try.

Next walk

Walks #2 & 3

2006-01-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

Walk #2

(Walked 18th of March 2005)

Huge gap between the 1st and 2nd walks. Had a bad dose of the flu which had me in and out of bed for about a month, voiceless part of the time and unfit to fly (to visit my Gran who'd had a stroke) for six bloody weeks.

Walk #2 was two blocks and I saw a brush turkey. Brush turkeys are black with a red beak and yellow flap round their neck. They generally stick to the hillsides but they come out in spring to look for a mate.

There's plenty of bush (forest) around Woy Woy so there's plenty of wildlife. Lots of native birds particularly.

Walk #3

(Walked 24th of March 2005)

(Big version) Rawson Road jetty.

This felt like a long walk at the time. Can't remember how many blocks it was but I was wiped out for days. I still had the flu at this point and had to stop every hundred yards or so for a wheeze. But it was good to get out of the house after so long.

Next walk

Walk #1

2006-01-15T13:12:00.000-08:00

(These posts were on my old site. My old site was stolen (long story). The dates they were walked are in brackets at the top of each post.)

(Walked 1st of March 2005)

Didn't blog my 1st walk but I remember it well. I'd been as sick as a dog and once round the block was all I could manage. When I got home I had a four hour nap to recover. Four hours, no word of a lie.

Next walk

Cuppla dace

2006-01-11T20:46:00.000-08:00

Come back in a bit when I've found my old posts and put them up. Too hot today to start digging about looking for the fucking backup CD.