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.

Stanley

We decided to go the back way from Beechworth to Myrtleford/Bright via Stanley. Stanley is only about 9 kay from Beechworth and I wanted to have a squiz. It has been a long time, 25+ years, since I've been this way. Last year's Black Saturday bushfire raged through this way on its way to Barwidgee Creek where our old home was destroyed. 18 months later and the green is coming back. Some parts of the bush are still black and lifeless though. The fire was hot enough to essentially sterilise vast tracts of bush.

Barwidgee Creek bushfire aftermath slideshow

This slideshow is all pictures I took last weekend of the old place or where it used to be after it was destroyed in the February's Black Saturday Bushfires. There is a little bit of greenery taking root but it has to be remembered the fires were 4 months ago.
I have prior posts about the place here and here.

The old house at Barwidgee Creek, lost in the recent Black Saturday bush fires

I've mentioned this place and the bushfires before here. Finally we've been able to come back and see for ourselves what happened. In a word, devastating. The last photo shows where the house stood. The house was quite large. Around 340 square metres. All the rubble has been cleared away. Carolyn, the current owner, told us over 200 tonnes of concrete had been carted away. The green shed, in the fourth photo, was behind the house and, bizarrely, survived the fire. The rainwater drain pipes melted in the heat though. The hill behind the house has been sterilised by the fire. It looks like a nuke has gone off. The white pot is the only surviving pot of the 8 or so that had dotted the veranda. Possibly the only intact item from the house after the fire. It was quite surreal standing in the middle of this devastation knowing that the house you grew up in should have been there.

We are incredibly sorry for the current owners. They escaped from the fire with the the clothes they were wearing. Everything else went with the house - photos, kids toys, everything. We can't imagine what they had and have to deal with and we can only offer them our best wishes. Only a kilometre or two up the road another local couple lost their lives in the same fire.

Victorian Bushfires - update

The number of homes destroyed has jumped to almost 2000 leaving 7000 people homeless. Today we were saddened to hear that one of those homes is one of the houses I grew up in. It has been more than 20 years since we lived there but you do have an emotional attachment to the place you grew up in as a kid. Google Maps and Google Street View have views of the house as it was [pictured above]. Thankfully most of our friends and neighbours who still live in the area survived and did not lose their houses. Unfortunately though there were two deaths in the Barwidgee Creek / Mudgeegonga area and more than a dozen other homes were destroyed. We can only imagine what these people have gone through and we're really sorry for their loss. Our thoughts are with everyone affected. In slightly better news apparently my uncle saved my cousin's house in Yackandandah from the fire. At one stage the house was surrounded on three sides by the blaze and he had to shelter behind the building because of the radiant heat. I'm not sure whether my uncle needs a medal or a kick up the bum for risking his life and staying and fighting. Here is the link to the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal again.

View Larger Map