Hills Street & Dwyer Street June 2017

It was freezing on the weekend when I went out to take building site photos and we were both glad to get back in the car.

There are more low-rise blocks of units in Hills Street than I realised. Hills Street sits on the outer lip of Bradys Gully and Dwyer Street crosses it and goes over the lip and down to the roundabout at the corner of Henry Parry Drive. The park there, next to the North Gosford private hospital, is the old Bradys Gully cemetery and some of the old gravestones are still in it.

I usually just drive along Henry Parry Drive, passing through Bradys Gully on my way north so I hadn’t noticed the low-rise blocks going up in Hills Street. It’s about 20 minutes walk from these two building sites to the station at Gosford so these units going up now will cost rather less to buy than the luxury towers that will be poking the sky over Gosford about this time in 18 months.

The views from the towers in Mann Street (Gosford’s main street) will be all the way down the Brisbane Water to Woy Woy, then Lion Island, the lighthouse at Barrenjoey Head and perhaps even into Pittwater, behind Palm Beach.

The view from yesterday’s building sites was good and fairly extensive from down on the ground so it’ll be quite good from the top floors. The Hills Street block will have westerly views over the Narara Valley (where Gosford is) and the Glenworth Valley half an hour inland and perhaps as far as Wisemans Ferry, a delightful old village on the winding Hawkesbury River.

The Dwyer Street block will very likely have glimpses or, from the top floors, proper views of the Tasman Sea, the sea off Sydney and the Central Coast. Once they’ll nearly finished, the adverts for them will go into the local real estate listings and we’ll all get a look at those views.

(Locals, if you live in a spot in Gosford or around the Brisbane Water or up towards Wyong, we’d love to see your view and you don’t have to tell us your address or your surname, just your town or suburb. Paste the URL or website address for your photos into the comments box below.)

Gosford is a small town

In June 2017, the population count for Gosford is about 3,400. The population of Sydney is about 5 million. So Gosford is a small town.

There are a few reasons all these apartment blocks are suddenly going up in Gosford:

1)  Sydney’s population keeps rising so the housing there is expensive and most of it is too far from the city centre

2)  The Central Coast’s population is rising, in line with the population of the whole of Australia

3)  Gosford is only an hour from the heart of Sydney by train and car

4)  It’s a lovely place to live

So Gosford is shedding its small-town vibe and becoming a middle-sized town. I think perhaps most towns do that fairly slowly but Gosford’s change is so disconcerting and exciting because it’s happening so quickly and suddenly.

Lots of locals are hating the change, especially those who moved up from Sydney to get away from tower blocks and busy streets. Others, even some who’ve lived here all their lives, are excited and say things like “it’s about time Gosford caught up”.

Me? I have a foot in both camps. It’s exciting but a bit scary too. I’ll miss the old small-town Gosford but, with Gosford being just an hour from downtown Sydney, this change had to happen. I’m already missing the old good bits but I’m also looking for the new good bits.

This map shows just a few of the towns and suburbs around the Brisbane Water. There are more but it's not a crowded place to live, it's just right.

I will be taking many more photos and so we'll see what changes and what doesn't, what we don't like and what we do like.

Come back next week for more photos and maps. Or enter your email address in the inbox pinger thing below.