Singo's tower AKA Bonython Tower

Towering over the Winter In The Park festival, 16th July 2018

It's cold enough for Kibble Park, in the green heart of Gosford, to host an ice rink and cold enough that our local building sites workers have to scrape ice off their windscreens to drive to work. And that's why I come late with my camera in winter!

Bonython Tower from Gosford railway station, 3rd July 2018

From the railway station, on the 3rd of July 2018, we can see the Bonython Tower is higher than the ridge behind it, Rumbalara Reserve. What a difference all these towers will make to our little valley town!

Singo's tower towering over Mann Street, 16th July 2018

As you walk along Mann Street, the main street of Gosford, you need to dodge the people just stopped staring up at the tower and speculating about when it will be finished and the scaffolding off, who's going to live there, how many more towers there will be and so on. Locals wonder, Sydneysiders up for a holiday wonder, foreign and interstate tourists wonder.

And I wonder how many or how few years it will be before there are no more of the little old 2-storey shopfronts along Mann Street and in the other dozen streets that make up downtown Gosford. Because Gosford is so physiclly small a town, squashed into the narrow mouth of the Narara Valley, the change in the look and feel of it will be enormous.

Exterior finishes in Paul Lane, 16th July 2018

Down in Paul Lane, at the back of the site, exterior work is finished on the residents' carpark level while it still goes on inside the loading bay on the office level and workers are still hard at it on the ground floor's restaurant level, in the cold afternoon shade.

Close to topping out, 16th July 2018

One whole worker and another worker's head, just visible through the blue safety mesh, right up at the top of the site on a cold breezy winter's afternoon. Topping out is very close now. I hope I'm there with my camera when it happens.

More sites coming later this week.


 Extra

Donnison Street overpass upgraded, taken 3rd July 2018

And it's not just new buildings towering over us. With the increase in population and the massive increase in building site trucks on Gosford's roads, there's been a lot of road upgrading going on too.

This particular upgrade and its workers were rained on almost non-stop and in winter too. Brrr.

From what I can make out, this overpass hadn't been upgraded since the 1970's. It was starting to show its age, as all things do, and the upgrade widened the pavement to take more traffic, added the railing to keep pedestrians safer and upgraded the road. Road workers, if I've left any upgrades etc. out, feel free to add them to the comments box. I always welcome more and better info.

On a purely personal note, I always appreciate road workers out there doing there job in all weathers and in the face of abuse from some members of the public. I know how well our roads in Australia are maintained compared to some parts of the work. There are some places in this world where the main streets of towns the size and busyness of Gosford are dust in summer and mud in winter.

So thank you, road workers and bridge builders. And thank you all workers who keep our streets and houses and businesses lit and supplied with electricity, thank you all workers who keep clean water flowing into our homes and businesses, thank you to all workers who keep our toilets and gutters functioning and, last but hardly least, thank you to those streeet sweepers I see on Gosford's streets sweeping up the discarded and windblown lolly wrappers and cigarette butts and worse things in our gutters and on our footpaths.

If I've left out any group of workers who daily keep Gosford's and the rest of Australia's streets and buildings functioning, forgive me and feel free to mention your group in the comments box at the end of this post.