May 16, 2004

Woy Woy

I grew up in Woy Woy. Central, Strathfield, Hornsby, Berowra, Cowan, Hawkesbury River, Wondabyne ... Woy Woy -- a smallish town of about 16,000 people in an untidy strip of beaches, mangrove swamps, coastal hills and sandy forest on the Central Coast of New South Wales. Woy Woy is right on the water -- it's still a "fisherman's paradise", enough so to have its own (mostly tacky) postcards -- and right on the main railway line north out of Sydney. It's the main town on "the Peninsula", the small flat sprawl that includes Ettalong, Umina, Booker Bay, Blackwall Mountain (a small but striking hill about 110 metres high) and sundry other places all indistinguishable and long-ago joined together into one larger town often itself referred to as "Woy Woy". The surrounding Central Coast was a mixture of commuter suburbs, beaches, holiday houses and amenities, and a shrinking fishing and farming base (mostly citrus fruits and dairy). Throughout my childhood you could see the small two-man trawlers going out to sea or to Broken Bay, or coming back with a halo of seagulls, pretty much daily in front of our house or past Ocean Beach or Booker Bay. You could buy fresh seafood at Woy Woy wharf, or even fresh bottled raw oysters on the platform of Hawkesbury River station (the sellers would hawk these from the platform to people in the trains through the windows).

A Sense Of Place
Five Quid A Pop
Expectations
This Isn't Sydney...
Shark Stories
Cedar Crescent, Please...
Proddies v. Catholics

2 Comments:

At 12/01/2005 12:38 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Woy Woy, More appropriate name would be Macquarie Fields on Sea due to the lowlifes who live there.

 
At 1/26/2009 1:31 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Above reads the comment from the guy who is probably from Newport Beach in Sydney, paying a fortune in rent for a crappy apartment in an area which is under all circumstances a huge ghetto. I guess the amount of money they are paying makes him/her feel rich.

Conclusion: Woy Woy Nice, Newport Beach, Sydney is NOT!

 

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