Truck rollover on F3

oh no not again!



thanks Joanne !

Woy Woy virtual tours

A project I started last xmas involving sitting down and reading through C. Swancotts books , the archives of Gosford Council and anything else I could lay my hands on , marking down points of interest on Google Earth , then transferring it all over to Google Maps for your viewing pleasure.
Some of the placemarks contain links to photos on the web , I haven't re edited most of the tours so some links may not work - just paste them into your browser.
I may update these files at some time in the future or if you are handy you can copy my tour and add to it then send me the new files
Anyway enjoy
Here is the first one as an embedded tour on this page showing the location of the old Woy Woy R.A.A.F wartime airstrip , taxiways and hangar locations ( estimated positions based on National Archive files )


View Larger Map

Other virtual tours ( click on em ) :
Old housing estates and land holdings
Old tracks and Trails
Old residences and boarding houses
Old shops and utilities
Old wharves and shipyards
Miscellaneous places of interest

A post about a post....

I keep meaning to do a story on this post I found , it's attached to my carport and I've been walking past it for the last 8 months thinking " I must do a post on that post "
So anyway last Christmas I was painting a house on the main beach at Pearl Beach and I spotted something in the surf , the waves that day were unusually big combined with a king tide.
Later on I looked out and spotted the object again on the beach right in front of where I was working , from what I could see it seemed to have been turned on a lathe , I sent the 2 young blokes I was working with down to retreive it next smoke break.
What they brought back was a 14 foot long post made of hardwood that had been turned on a lathe , it weighed a ton as it was still sodden with sea water. To me and the carpenter working next door it looked like an old verandah support post - a fancy one that would have been near 100 years old , another chippie reckoned it could have come from an Indonesian fishing boat as some of these craft have elaborate timberwork.
As I have painted many an old house I reckon it's Aussie and very old and probably washed down Hawkesbury river at some stage , then washed up on either Lion Island or the rocks between Patonga and Pearl Beach and sat there for ages until the high tides and surf dislodged it for it's final journey to Pearl Beach and then on my ute racks to my joint.
I arrived at this conclusion as there was no seaweed or things growing on it , so it it hadn't been in the drink for long.
So if you have lost a post or want this post then contact me , until then I have a dandy garden ornament !

Fascinating Aboriginal art discovered

You may have seen the latest discovery of Aboriginal rock art in the news lately, researchers have uncovered thousands of drawings depicting all manner of European objects including ships , guns and aircraft , as well as older Maccasan trading vessels.
You can read up on the full story here , and view a slideshow of the drawings here.
The diagrams are being documented as there seems to be mining companies lurking into the area to continue the great tradition of destroying Aboriginal history
The Woy Woy area is also rich in Aboriginal rock art and paintings , sadly most of these are ageing and vandalised by the successive local councils and flannelette wearing bogans , large portions of the Bulgandry site were closed off to the public in the late 70's to preserve it and all reference to other carving and painting sites were slowly removed from new maps of the area.



The destruction caused by sandstone quarries , road building and general development to Aboriginal sites on the coast is kept hush hush , as the sites aren't well known anymore then no one will know.........
Take the Bora ground at Patonga for example , firstly it had a road blasted through it in the 30's for the new road to Patonga , and now the NPWS and any other local government department use part of it as access to a fire trail , I cannot contain my disgust at seeing large tractor tyre marks scarring the rock surface of this site less than 20 metres from a carving.



Because of the road edges being washed off during rain the whole area is being silted up and large parts are now unnaturally vegetated , covering carvings and the unique tessellations.



I think Gosford Council and the NPWS should wake up and fix this up immediately.

10 things in my junkbox

Rainy day , closet cleanup , old stuff in box , 10 things that tell you something about their owner:



1. Old "Woolstar" pump action pesticide sprayer , you used to fill it up yourself and use it to spray bugs , highly dangerous because you had to handle the chemicals , kids loved em cause they made dandy water pistols , but who ever washed them out first , no wonder young Timmy developed a nice set of breasts when he was 13 !



2. Dingoblue mousepad - they were the coolest ISP ever , they gave you free stuff , never overcharged , always had the best connection - and they went broke ! ...... go figure :



3. A cannon shell from a French tank , picked up off the battlefield in France in World War 1 by my grandfather and handed down to me when I was 12



4. My original Coca-Cola yo-yo from 6th grade at Woy Woy South Primary School , I bought it at Bourke Road shop for 50 cents I think , a good mint one will cost you $20 - $50 bux now on Ebay



5. Iraq's Most Wanted playing cards - the first thing I ever bought online , I got em just to test out my credit card during the last invasion of Iraq , they gave these to the troops to identify the top 50 most wanted Iraqi's - Saddam was the ace of spades



6. A drumstick from the band Iron Maiden - I caught 2 of Clive Burr's sticks during a concert at the Capitol Theatre in the 80's , last tour they arrived in their own 747 piloted by the lead singer Bruce Dickinson



7. Signed copies of Charles Swancott's books on Woy Woy , Gosford and the Hawkesbury River




8. Airforce badges and patches given to me by my grandfather and uncle , the patches are from the Australian jet fighter squadrons " Top Hat and Cane " and " Black Panther " my uncle flew Super Sabre jets back in the 50's before he went to Quantas



9. No home would be complete without a tin of Goanna salve , handy for dandruff , excema , lumbago - you name it !



10. An original Rubiks cube from the 70's - still unsolved all these years - it was one fad I didn't get into , as you can see I considered peeling all the stickers off and doing it that way , but even that was too time consuming !

Jeanne - Davistown

I've worked as a painter and decorator for all of my working life and get to work in some interesting places , occasionally I will take the camera to work to record a particular job.
This is a job we done a couple of years back and the photos have sat unexplained in my albums at Webshots.
We had a call from a lady in Sydney who needed help with her grandparents old house at Davistown , Gosford Council had ordered her to remove all the decaying lead based paint from the house as it was polluting nearby properties.
The house was built in 1914 by her grandfather using a kit imported by sea from Canada , only the brick foundations , out buildings and roof were locally sourced , it comprised of 2 bedrooms , a living/dining area and rear laundry/bathroom , we were unable to work out where the kitchen was though as there was no stove or fireplace inside.
Inside the walls were made from timber panelling and the former owner had gone to great trouble decorating the inside , hand painted friezes around the ceiling depicting all manner of water craft on Sydney Harbour , hand painted dado lines with cut out fishes also painted by hand adorned the lower walls.



We figured the guy worked as a painter for the Government somewhere , possibly the Ferries or Garden Island as the painting style was similar to how they painted up the old train interiors , I wish I had my camera the day we were allowed inside to see the house.
Outside as we slowly stripped through an estimated 20 - 30 coats of paint of all colours , we cursed the old bastard who must have re painted the house every year in a new colour , and imagined him having a laugh at us poor bastards suited up like spacemen undoing his handy work.



The timber panelling around the lower walls was all cedar and in perfect condition , the gables were adorned with 2 cut out Rosellas that were lovingly hand painted , like the fish inside and the house name Jeanne was painted similarly , maybe this was the lady of the house's name.
So after 2 months and much cursing and sweating we had removed every square inch of paint from the entire house , the owner had run out of money and didn't even have enough to pay us to at least put a primer coat on all that now bare lovely timber , it stills sits there bare and rotting to this day.



Going over another man's work like we did gave us an insight to who he was and his love of his house by the way it had been maintained , to see it wasting away like that is a shame and I'm sure the old painter who owned it would agree.

Annoying local ads

I was listening to 2GO today and a station jingle stated that " we are as coasty as the twin stacks at Munmora Power Station " ........great so it's you dickheads who have been belching out tonnes of pollution in the airwaves
A free Pepsi voucher to the marketing section at 2GO
Another ad that is getting annoying is the ones for Brentwood Village , harmless enough , but with it's blanket media campaign it's all getting tedious.......
You know the ads , the ones about old ducks and rambling gardeners
I often have a giggle when the ads come on for different products for the cattle industry on NBN " I must get a drum of that for Chewy " I often think to myself.