To see the other 2 articles I’ve published today, scroll down past the bottom of this article, or click on “July” in the sidebar to the right.
This is the Woy Woy peninsula. It's 20 minutes drive south of Gosford, 7 to 15 minutes on the train depending on how many stops it makes.
The Narringa apartment building is in the blue circle near the centre of the map, on the corner Blackwall Road and Terry Avenue. In the red circles are, from the centre near the top, Woy Woy railway station and town centre, Ettalong Beach town centre (near bottom right) West Street Umina Beach (near bottom centre) and the handful of shops at Lone Pine Avenue on Ocean Beach Road (small circle, above West Street).
Sydney is a mere 70 minutes by train from Woy Woy, via Hornsby and Strathfield. At journey’s end, the train pulls into Central Station and from there you can take a train to anywhere else in Sydney the trains run. Or you can change to another line at Hornsby or Strathfield.
Woy Woy peninsula has a lot of retired and elderly residents. You can see them on the shopping streets on pension day. But Woy Woy’s railway station is also one of the busiest commuter stations on the Central Coast. Those commuters come in from Daleys Point, St Huberts Island, Empire Bay, Killcare, Hardys Bay, Pretty Beach and Wagstaffe and from Saratoga and Davistown. There are ferry wharves at Saratoga, Davistown and Empire Bay and the ferry run there takes you to Woy Woy station. Once or twice I’ve taken the Woy Woy ferry myself and it’s a lovely way to get to a railway station.
The For Sale board up on this building site gives the building’s name as ‘Narringa’. And, as you can see, it’s close to being ready to move into.
This view looks east from Blackwall Road at the corner of Terry Avenue. At the left edge of the photo you can see part of the hill that is Blackwall Mountain. On my topographic map of Woy Woy, Blackwall Mountain is marked as being 100 metres near the top. (There’s no height given for the very top.) There are some houses on Blackwall Mountain, on the west and north sides, but not many.
As you can see from this photo of the side of Narringa, parts of it are very nearly finished on the outside. There’s some painting still to be done down at fence level and I can see something unfinished dangling where the paint changes from grey to orange.
The balconies on this side of ‘Narringa’ face Blackwall Road and the water. The houses on the other side of Blackwall Road, the water side, are mostly single-storey so the top and middle floors of ‘Naringa’ should have water views over Brisbane Water and Rileys Island and St Huberts Island. St Huberts is covered in houses but Rileys Island is all trees.
This second building is under construction at the back of ‘Narringa’. The For Sale sign says it will contain “2 x contemporary townhouses, with master bedroom, ensuite, living and kitchen on the ground floor, each with a private courtyard”. It looks like they have one bedroom each.
The main building’s apartments are described as “energy efficient...1, 2 and 3 bedroom options with views of Brisbane Water and Coastal Hinterland...ducted air conditioning throughout with open plan kitchen and dining areas leading out to large private balconies”.
Commuters to Sydney who move into ‘Narringa’ would catch the bus to Woy Woy station from outside the swimming pool next door. That would take about 5 minutes. Or they could walk straight down Blackwall Road to the traffic lights at the corner of Railway Street, cross there and be at Woy Woy station in about 20 minutes.
It’s worth repeating at this point that I receive no financial gain from extolling the virtues of these new buildings or indeed from extolling the virtues of Gosford, the Brisbane Water area or any of their delights.
I started this blog purely for the purposes of documenting the rapid changes my town (Gosford) and the area around it are undergoing. All these apartment blocks and towers, some going up now and others soon to be going up, are going to increase the population quite quickly and alter the area quite a bit. My feelings about those changes are ambivalent: I don’t want to lose that small-town feel but the future is inevitable and quite exciting. Some things about the changes I won’t like and some things I will. Which is which only time will tell.
To see the other 2 articles I’ve published today, scroll down past the bottom of this article, or click on “July” in the sidebar to the right.
Come back next week for more photos and maps. Or enter your email address where it says "Follow By Email" in the sidebar at the right.
