Over the past few weeks another blog has been taking shape (see it here) . I have wanted to distance the information about the town from the stuff about the studio and my life. I was reluctant to take on another one as I have been avoiding even doing the maintenance on many of the websites since the body shock of the heart surgery and heart attacks. I guess I have had about a year of just coasting and not being well enough to do more than absolutely necessary with any degree of comfort. The new block will still be quite a lazy effort. The posts are simple and clean with images as they come to hand. Sections so far include Notes, History and uncategorised but the whole thing will grow. One new section I am looking at right now is Flora. Over the last seven or so years I have photographed and identified a bunch of local, native plants for various reasons and although others have written them up also I may write up the more iconic of them. Those which identify a local ecosystem.

There are two posts on local shipwrecks so far. I found a section in a series of local history books I was able to save when someone threw a collection out (The Brisbane Water Story. Parts 1 to 4. by C. Swancott, R.A.H.S. Honorary Research Officer: Brisbane Waters Historical Society. Printed by Brisbane Waters Historical Society (part1; 1953, to part 4; 1955)) This section about Budgewoi and including some shipwrecks is quite small and almost an afterthought at the end of the last book so some more research was required. The number of shipwrecks up and down the east coast of NSW blew me away. There are apparently 1800 of them! They are almost all well documented and in many cases there are images of the ships available so I will collate the local ones somehow and put images and stories up on that blog. Swancott has several stories that are not among the information I have so far and some interesting little asides although I wish he had focussed more on Budgewoi. The fact is that Budgewoi was a difficult place to access. Not a lot went on here as far as that historian was concerned and much of it went on later than his period of interest and the documentation had yet to filter across to a man whose primary area of interest was Brisbane Water and the Hawkesbury River