White whale, Singo, Lynne Avenue & WWII

 The view from afar

6 of Gosford's cranes visible from Pt Clare station, 29th June 2018

Today we're starting with an overview of the town. In this photo, only 6 of Gosford's cranes visible but there are currently more than double that many cranes working in Gosford. The photo was taken on the 29th of June 2018 from beside Point Clare railway station.

The next Crane Count and map are coming in July 2018.


 Bonython Tower AKA Singo's tower

Bonython Tower from Mann St footbridge, 9th of June 2018

Between the flu and the weather, this is as good a photo of Mann Street as I've been able to snap recently. Taken on the 9th of June 2018.

The angle makes the Bonython Tower look quite small but it's at least twice the height of the building in the left foreground.

Bonython Tower from Mann St footbridge, 9th of March 2018

What a difference 3 months has made! In this photo, the tower was unnoticed by some people. Now, as it is in the photo above, everyone stops and stares at it every time they go into Gosford.

(Singo workers, I'll be back for my more usual snaps of your site when I've caught up with all the other Gosford sites.)


 Lynne Avenue

Lynne Avenue site nearing topping out, 25th June 2018

Not long now, gentlemen. The Lynne Avenue site was close to topping out on the 25th of June 2018. And the weather in this photo is the ideal weather for building site photography: nice and dry for both photographer and workers. Pity it's not the same again today.


 White whale sighted at last

Hospital site between Holden Street & Showground Road, 9th June 2018

The hospital's Beane Street West building site. The blue-metalled access lane stretching up from the foreground to the back of the site is where Beane Street West used to be.

In the middle of the photo, on the right, we can see the construction itself going gangbusters at last, after months of earthmoving and foundation work on this tricky hill site. Right up the top, up past the curve of white and orange barriers and the earthmover still hard at work, we can see the tops of existing hospital buildings, near the emergency entrance of the hospital on the western side of Holden Street.

Hospital site between Holden Street & Showground Road, 9th June 2018

Due to flu versus weather versus traffic, I had to take these 3 snaps of the hospital site on a Sunday. I prefer photos with workers in them but photo access to this site has been a photographer's nightmare.

Workers' access is not much better and, with so much equipment stored within the fence and the buildings going up starting to crowd the site, I think you're going to have an even bigger squeeze soon. Good luck with it.


 Extra

Old Nissen hut in Miller Street Ourimbah, 9th June 2018

And now for something completely different: an old world War II Nissen hut on the edge of the university campus in Mills Street Ourimbah.

During the war, the land the university now sits on was used as a military training ground and there are a few remnants of that military installation still to be seen. There is another Nissen hut nearby, in a side street on the other side of the railway line. I'll add it when I spot it.


Okay, that's it from me for today. There's a pile of work waiting on my desk for me. I'll put some more photos up later this week and the Crane Count and it's new map will come this month too.

Sites & views

The 32 Mann Street site, seen from Batley Street West Gosford. This site too is close to topping out and has just 2 or 3 pours left before that happens.

On its left, we can see the long-finished Australia Tax Office (ATO) building, with the orange-brown vertical slats. The light blue structure in front of them both is Grahame Park AKA Bluetongue Stadium AKA "the prettiest stadium in NSW" due to its views from the seats down the length of Brisbane Water.

Behind, up near the left top of the photo, we can see John Whiteway Drive snaking up through the trees and disappearing around the corner to pass the old Gosford quarry up there on the top of the hill. It was operational from the 1920's to 1974 and the overgrown remains of the quarry are still visible from the road.

The ridge on which the quarry sits is part of or on the edge of (some maps are unclear) Rumbalara Reserve. The ridge in the background looks like Kincumba Mountain at Green Point. (The Mountain is spelled Kincumba and the town Kincumber.)

While we're still up on the hill at Batley Street, this is a view of the 3 cranes currently visible from there. From left to right: 'Vue' at Kendall Street Gosford, Donnison Street West near the corner of St George Street and, away over on the right of the photo and halfway down, the 32 Mann Street site.

The 'Harbour View' site on Wilhelmina Street West Gosford has shot up another 2 or 3 stories since I last blogged it and is just as busy as ever.

As well as having had the biggest whole to dig for the foundations and the whole of that hole having been the hard yakka of sandstone all the way down, this site also wins the prize for the most languages spoken on site. Hello to you all.

'Acqua' is just one block downhill from 'Harbour View' on Wilhelmina Street and St George Street. It was cleared months ago and then sat idle for a while but, as we can see here, it's now active and roaring along with its foundations. It's a lot steeper than it looks in this photo and there's a lot of clay in it so it must be another very slippery worksite.

Donnison Street West site, near the corner of St George Street. Another big sandstone hole had to be dug for this site though, luckily for the workers, it was half the depth and half the width and length of the hole for 'Harbour View'.

The trees in the background are on Presidents Hill, which looks down into Gosford. Other sites backing onto Presidents Hills are the 2 sites on Kendall Street, the steep little site on Hargraves Street and the site on Faunce Street West, behind the hospital.

A closer view of the Donnison Street West site. The day I took this, the 20th of June 2018, this site and all the others I saw that day were crawling with workers making up for time lost to recent dark rainy days.


 Extra 

I've just noticed that I'm now over 100 articles, also known as posts, on this blog. In fact, this one makes 112. And I've had 4,336 page views and 4 spam comments. You know you're getting popular when you get spam comments.


More photos in a few days.

Back at last

I had the flu for 6 weeks, hence the long absence.

This is the Batley Street site, with Fagans Bay in the left background and West Gosford in the right background. This site had grown a couple of floors since I last saw it.

Fielder Street site from Batley Street. We can see a strip of the Batley site on the left edge of this photo. The road in the left background is the Central Coast highway. Locals know it as "the road coming up to the West Gosford lights. The buildings in the left background are the shops at the West Gosford lights. Along the front edge of the Fielder Street site, right there i the middle of the photo, we can see the yellow and black power line shields. The site is very close to the curb. The crane on the right side of the photo is also part of the Fielder Street site.

The Fielder Street site has come a long way too, despite all that mud and clay. This photo was taken 2 or 3 days after all that rain and there are still big puddles on the site and around it.

Batley Street and the 'Harbour View' site on Wilhelmina Street are clearly visible from Fielder Street. The suburban part of West Gosford, which they're all in, is very small.


Extra

A nod to the building boom by our local graffitists.

More in a few days.

My white whale

The hospital site at Beane Street West is very hard to photograph, 16th April 2018

Some of the building sites in Gosford, West Gosford and Point Frederick/East Gosford are tricky to photograph to my complete satisfaction due to being on one-lane streets (Lynn Avenue, Hargraves Street, Fielder Street) narrow two-lane streets (Kendall Avenue, Faunce St West, Donnison St West, Mann Street) or just tricky to photograph satisfactorily due to other reasons, like the Bonython Tower on Mann Street (too tall now) too much traffic (Kendall Street) or miles from the nearest parking space on a hot or cold day (all the hospital sites and 'Golf Heights').

The red arrow points to my great white whale, 4th May 2018

And then there's the trickiest site of all to photograph: my white whale, the Beane Street West hospital site, the one bordered by Holden Street and the railway line along Showground Road. Getting clear views of that site has proved almost impossible so far. Beane Street East shows the site from from front to back (Showground to Holden) but not from side to side. Down on Showground Road and up on Holden Street, traffic safety barriers and the mesh on the fence prevent decent views from being snapped, and there's no building I can get access to that overlooks the site.

When I've got a whole morning, sometime this month, I'm going to stalk and bag as much as I can of Beane Street West and all the other hospital sites. I'll have to park down in Baker Street and walk up hill and down dale to get to all the hospital sites in one go. I'll get plenty of exercise.

Come back in a few days for more building site snaps.

Bonython Tower AKA Singo's Tower

Concrete cladding on the south side, 1st May 2018

A big panel of concrete cladding on the south side, the water view side, of the residential tower. In the background is Rumbalara Reserve, the ridge running along the east side of Gosford.

The site as seen from Paul Lane, 1st May 2018

First up this time is the Paul Lane view of the whole site.

The residential tower from the Imperial Centre's roof, 1st May 2018

Then up to the view from right above Paul Lane, from the rooftop carpark of the Imperial shopping centre. In the background on the right in Presidents Hill.

Workers in loading bay, 1st May 2018

Back down to Paul Lane again where a trio of workers are hard at it in the loading bay at the back of the site. There's still plenty of work to be done inside down the bottom and on other lower floors, while work continues on the outside as the residential tower keeps climbing.

Working on the inside, 1st May 2018

Another worker doing work on the inside, this time on a floor about halfway up the tower and level with the rooftop carpark of the Imperial Shopping Centre. We can see some of the parked cars on that rooftop on the right-hand edge of this photo.

Prepping another crane-load, 1st May 2018

Getting another load ready for lifting by the crane. on one of those handy decks that stick out from the side of the building.

 The load rising into the autumn sky, 1st May 2018

The load rising into the autumn sky, 1st May 2018

And up it goes into the blue autumn sky, right up to the top of the site, by the look of it.

With so many sites active at the same time now, I'm now getting to most sites once a month. So I'll be back at the Bonython Tower site in about 4 weeks. See you then. Future residents, site workers, locals and others can add this website to their Favourites, look it up in their History. If you're reading this on a desktop or laptop, you'll be able to see the email inbox notifications form in the sidebar on the right ---->

What's up today?

We have 2 pages today:

Pinnacle - with No Activity

32 Mann Street - a nameless government building with leases in the bottom storeys.

Come back in a few days for more fun with building sites.

Pinnacle

Where Pinnacle is, 16th April 2018

The Pinnacle site is behind the old Telstra building on Mann Street, opposite the 32 Mann Street site. The views from the upper floors will be of the trees on Kariong Ridge, lovely little Fagans Bay, the Gosford Broadwater and other parts of the Brisbane Water estuary and perhaps also the trees of Rumbalara Reserve.

The yellow crane in the background (right, against hill) is the one on Donnison Street West in West Gosford.

Lots of rocks at Pinnacle too, 16th April 2018

Lots of big rocks in the Pinnacle site too. Gosford is sandstone territory, as the old quarry on top of John Whiteway Drive attests.

You can see the old quarry marked on the map on the little kiosk thing in Kibble Park in the centre of Gosford. And you can see its 19th century products in buildings like the Art Deco building and the Consersatorium on the uphill corners of Mann Street and Georgiana Terrace. If you look at the side of the Conservatorium, you can see the windows of the holding cells from back when it was the police station.

Pinnacle is another tight site, 16th april 2018

The Pinnacle site is so tight, and the parking on Mann Street so tight lately too, that workers' parking is squeezed in on-site.

Pinnacle's only workers' access, 16th April 2018

This narrow driveway is the only access to the Pinnacle site. It comes off Mann Street between a small cafe and the old Telstra building, just opposite the 32 Mann Street site.



 No Activity

No activity on this Henry Parry Drive site, 16th April 2018

While I was up on Henry Parry Drive aiming my camera down into the Pinnacle site, I popped around the curve of the road to see if much more progress has been made on the other active site on Hennry Parry Drive.

The answer was y-e-e--no. It was as silent as the grave again. Not sure what's going on there.



 Locally Owned Locally Made Gosford

For the last couple of weeks I've been putting out the call for local tradies to email me their work contact details and what sort of work they do for a free listing on this website and, when I get the time to add to it again, on my other site: Locally Owned Locally Made Gosford.

And I've just realised I left out a whole slab of local contractors and businesses and makers and growers by just calling for tradies. So any locally owned business or any local maker or grower can send me their work contact details and a bit about their work or business or agri-business. Tell me as much as you can and I'll edit it down so everyone gets around the same amount of screen space as everyone else.

It's FREE but it's for small and medium sized LOCALS ONLY. None with ownership outside the NSW Central Coast and its hinterland suppliers.

32 Mann Street

It was a dark and stormy afternoon at 32 Mann Street, 19th April 2018

32 Mann Street as seen from Mann Street near the corner of Georgina Terrace. The crane was hard at work picking materials up and moving them to where they were needed.

From the corner of Georgiana Terrace, 19th April 2018

On the left edge of this photo, we can see the 3-storey beige copshop behind the cars parked along Mann Street. With all these building sites and their workers' cars, parking space is often at a premium in Gosford these days.

View from Georgiana Terrace, 19th April 2018

On the left, an old Education Department building, right on the corner of Georgiana Terrace, on the right the recently finished Tax Office and in the middle another angle on 32 Mann Street.

For lease already, 19th April 2018

32 Mann Street is not yet finished and already it's for lease.

Lower floors & background views, 19th April 2018

We can see in this photo that not even the lower floors are finished. In the background, we can see a white light tower on the site, one of the wide blue light towers at the football stadium, the trees along the outside of the stadium, the playing field on Georgiana Terrace and, right on the right-hand edge of the photo, the back of the Tax Office building. The ridge in the distance are on Kariong ridge.

A busy site, 19th April 2018

3 workers busy about their work as an afternoon storm continues to build in the sky.

The apprentice getting a good workout, 19th April 2018

Internal scaffolding? Some sort of reinforcement bar? I can't tell. Help me out, gentlemen.

Easy does it, 19th April 2018

Whatever it's for, it needs to be carefully threaded through the external scaffolding to the workers inside.

Hard at work up top under a blue sky on another day, 16 April 2018

The 16th was a blue sky day but on Thursday the 19th the storm came at about three that afternoon, a good hour before knock-off time on most sites, I think. The views up the top of building sites are great but the work clearly has its weather hazards.

Access stairs being lifted up ready, 16th April 2018

The hirers out of scaffolding and access stairs around Gosford must be doing very well in this first fine flush of Gosford's 21st century building boom. Not to mention the hirers out of cranes, fencing, skips and the thousand other things every good building site needs. The area near Gosford a lot of those things come from is Somersby, up on the plateau at the top of Kariong Ridge.



 Locally Owned Locally Made Gosford
 
I'm putting out the call for local tradies to email me their work contact details and what sort of work they do for a free listing on this website and, when I get the time to add to it again, on my other site: Locally Owned Locally Made Gosford.

And I've just realised I left out a whole slab of local contractors and businesses and makers and growers by just calling for tradies. So any locally owned business or any local maker or grower can send me their work contact details and a bit about their work or business or agri-business. Tell me as much as you can and I'll edit it down so everyone gets around the same amount of screen space as everyone else.

It's FREE but it's for small and medium sized LOCALS ONLY. None with ownership outside the NSW Central Coast and its hinterland suppliers.

What's up today?

Faunce Street West

Beane Street East - I found out why this is a silent site.

Looking for the Crane Count map? 

Why do you hardly see me and my camera these days? Because things are hotting up in Gosford in terms of active sites. So I have to do them in bunches and because there are more sites, there have to be more bunches. I'll get back to your site soon. Meanwhile, enjoy having a stickybeak at the photos of everyone else's site.

Faunce Street West

Whole of the Faunce Street West site, 16th April 2018

This site sat idle for a good 6 months, with just its big yellow crane and two old houses on it. Then quite suddenly last month, it was cleared and the earthmovers came in and started digging out the spoil. We can see here spoil removal is still underway.

Steepish site with plenty of spoil, 16th April 2018

Here we can see from the upper and lower rooftop heights of the units to the left that this is a site of middling steepness. It's looking quite sandy so far but we'll have to wait and see what's under that sand, whether it's clay or sandstone.

Another of Gosford's tight site, 16th April 2018

It's also another very tight site, with the spoil trucks having to stop on the road itself and even the scrap bins having to be stacked up in the front corner of the site, behind the mesh.

Spoil being neatly dropped into a spoil truck while the traffic waits, 16th April 2018

Clean-up crew taking care of windblown spoil, 16th April 2018

Local traffic waits patiently as spoil is dropped neatly into a waiting spoil truck and the clean-up crew moves the windblown bits off the road. The winds have been quite strong this past week so the clean-up crews must have been very busy and the wind must have caused some significant safety issues and all-round aggravation on Gosford's building sites.

The hill we can see in the background of all these photos is Presidents Hill, also marked on some maps as Waterview Park. There is a lookout at the top of Presidents Hill. Access is by car from the end of Hely Street in West Gosford. The view from up there is down the length of the Brisbane Water to Barrenjoey lighthouse, Palm Beach and Pittwater in northern Sydney. Best photography light is early mornings and late afternoons.



 Locally Owned Locally Made Gosford

For the last couple of weeks I've been putting out the call for local tradies to email me their work contact details and what sort of work they do for a free listing on this website and, when I get the time to add to it again, on my other site: Locally Owned Locally Made Gosford.

And I've just realised I left out a whole slab of local contractors and businesses and makers and growers by just calling for tradies. So any locally owned business or any local maker or grower can send me their work contact details and a bit about their work or business or agri-business. Tell me as much as you can and I'll edit it down so everyone gets around the same amount of screen space as everyone else.

It's FREE but it's for small and medium sized LOCALS ONLY. None with ownership outside the NSW Central Coast and its hinterland suppliers.