Brisbane Water
Brisbane Water is a saltwater estuary and is open to the mouth
of Broken Bay, just north of Sydney. It is close enough to Sydney that a ferry
runs daily from Ettalong, on the Woy Woy peninsula, to Palm Beach on the
northernmost beach of Sydney.
You can see Gosford marked in
red at the top of this map and Woy Woy marked about halfway down on the left,
also in red. Woy Woy and its peninsula are within the area known as the Greater
Gosford and within the Gosford City Council boundaries. Gosford and Woy Woy are
about 20 minutes’ drive apart, along Brisbane Water Drive which runs down the
west side of Brisbane Water and very close to the water itself, a lovely drive.
Chambers Place Woy Woy
Woy Woy’s skyline is changing
again. These new flats in Chambers Place were in mid construction in September
2016. Photo taken from Blackwall Road.
The same flats in early June
2017. They are very nearly finished.
This building is four storeys
tall. The only taller buildings in the village of Woy Woy are the 5 or 6 storey
Council carpark beside Deepwater Plaza and opposite the railway station and the
clock tower on the Clocktower building between the carpark and the railway
station.
Before ground was broken on this
site, an article in the Peninsula News said this building would have small
flats for low-income renters on the upper floors and a few offices and shops on
the bottom floor. As it is now, it’s hard to see where the carpark at the
bottom ends and where the shops and/or offices will be.
Terry Avenue Woy Woy
Blackwall Road flats, at the
corner of Terry Avenue and next to the pool, in May 2017. There are few blocks
of flats on the Woy Woy peninsula, though there are plenty of the villa-style
units, including a few 2-storey villa units.
The villa units tend to run the
depth of the land they’re on, lined up backwards from the road rather than
along it, more often than not. That softens the visual impact of such dense
housing. A multi-storey block of flats has nowhere to hide and can fit more
dwellings onto the same amount of land. So blocks of flats, large and small,
will change the visual landscape of the Woy Woy peninsula more quickly than
more of the villa-style units.
Villa-style units have been
popular on the Woy Woy peninsula primarily because of the high population of
the elderly there. That is, elderly and arthritic people tend to prefer
single-storey housing and so single-storey housing has been dominant.
This block of flats is more
likely to appeal to the commuter market. The bus-stop to the railway station is
right outside the swimming pool next door and from Woy Woy station to Sydney’s
Central station is a mere 70 minutes on the fast train. Add to that commuting
time the lovely Brisbane Water just a short walk away from these flats and I
can easily see why they would be attractive to commuters.
(By the way, I extol the
virtues of the Gosford/Brisbane Water area because I live here and I love it. I
receive no payment as a result of running this website. I do it because it
interests me.)
Early June 2017 at the Blackwall
Road/Terry Avenue flats. Construction is all but finished and some exterior
painting has been done, as you can see from the side with the orange and
fashionable grey. The windows are in too.
This site was previously an
empty weed-strewn piece of land where an old petrol station once stood. From my
fairly hazy memory of the petrol station, I would say it was built in the
1940’s. If any local has more accurate information on it, please put it in the
comments box below.
I will be taking many more photos and so, over time, we'll see
what changes and what doesn't, what we don't like and what we do like.
