New aerial photos of Barwidgee Creek house before and after the Black Saturday Bushfire of 2009

A company called NearMap have announced that they will have high resolution aerial photos of the recent Queensland flood disaster on their mapping service. That got me thinking about whether or not they had high resolution photos of our old place at Barwidgee Creek. Or at least to see if they look anything like the Google pictures. Near Map's photos are indeed high resolution. They're taken from planes so the photos are quite detailed. Google don't update their photos as often so the Google shot was taken some time before the Black Saturday Bushfires I've written about before. Near Map's photo was taken on 26th January 2010 - about a year after the fire. I've animated both shots to show the green before fire shot and the after fire devastated black landscape. The red circle is where our old place was.


The photo below is taken from Google Maps and shows the Barwidgee Creek place sometime before the Black Saturday fire. The photo is overly green but note how lush the bush is. The house is in the large clearing towards the middle of the photo. Behind the house, slightly down and to the right in the photo, is a large shed. The shed survived the fire. The house was completely destroyed.

Click the photo to see the high resolution version.

The photo below is from NearMap.com.au and shows the state of Barwidgee Creek about a year after the fire. The bush behind the house, to the right and below the house in the photo, was almost sterilised in the fire and has taken a couple of years to come back. Last time we were there, about 20 months after the fire, some green had taken root and the landscape wasn't quite so bleak looking. The shed is still there but only the barest outline in the dirt of where the house stood gives any indication that the ol' hacienda ever existed.

Click the photo to see the high resolution version.

Please note that we have not lived in the Barwidgee Creek house for about two decades. While it is very very sad to have lost our childhood home we can only imagine the heartache and devastation the current owners went through when they lost their home and belongings. We can only offer them our deepest sympathies for their loss.