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.

Myrtleford Butter Factory

Long weekends don't seem so long when you're on your way back home. Before heading off on a 7 hour drive you need to have a good breakfast and that is why we stop in Myrtleford at The Butter Factory. Coffee, toast, pancakes with butter and Canadian maple syrup, bacon and eggs and eggs benedict.
The Butter Factory is pretty popular so we weren't able get a seat inside but they eventually managed to get a heater started up on the verandah which made sitting outside marginally less freezing. It had been cold enough that their cold water pipes had frozen earlier that morning. When I was growing up here as a kid our water pipes froze on a regular basis in Winter. Many a morning we'd have no cold water till midday when the sun had a chance to thaw out the pipes.








After brekky team Nixon split up. Moira went south to Melbourne and home and we set a course north for Sydney.
Only one more incident of note for the weekend before we got home. I seemed to be pissing people off this weekend. We stopped for petrol in Albury about an hour into the trip. I filled it up, paid and went to the dunny. I thought I'd better wash the windscreen because it was spattered with bugs and it was pretty messy. I'd just started doing the windscreen when I realised that a 4 wheel drive was parked in behind the Cressida in the queue to get petrol. The woman in the car leaned out and said "You've been there a while. Move out of the way so I can fill up." I thought, give me a break I won't be that long but I said "I won't be long. How about I move forward a bit?"
She said "No move over there," she gestured to the car park about 50 metres away, "You've been there a while." I noticed now that she was quite cranky.
Rude bitch I thought and I picked up the water bucket and squeegee again and went back to my windscreen. I was going to move the car a bit so she could get closer to the fuel pump but she blew it by being rude. She got out of her car to give me another serve. I think fucking dick was mentioned. I ignored her and kept meticulously cleaning all my windows. I had intended to clean all the windows from the get go but now I thought she was really going to be annoyed. And she was. "Now you're just being a fucking prick," she said.
"A bit," I said.
She kept jumping into and out of her car to say a few choice words to me. I told her if she stopped annoying me I could get it done quicker.
By now Michelle had returned from the dunny and I filled her in on what had been happening. Michelle said something to me and the woman jumped out of her car again and started towards us saying "What did you call me?"
Michelle just said "I wasn't talking to you" and the woman sized up Michelle and she got back into her car. She kept mouthing off at us though. I finished the windows and we got into the car and drove off, slowly. The woman rolled her car forward with her head out the window spouting shit at us. I wound down my window and told her to relax and have a good day. Bitch.
I think I just attract/provoke the wrong sort of crowd. Maybe I am a prick.

Lunch in Myrtleford

Pies and snot blocks vanilla slices for lunch at Heiner's Bakery in Myrtleford. Heiner's was next door to dad's Mobil Depot. Dad was the local Mobile fuel supplier when we lived in Myrtleford. Now the Mobile Depot has gone (picture of vacant block below) and Heiner's have expanded. It was hard to believe that this vacant block once had a Mobil service station and a few really large, multiple thousands of litres, storage tanks of fuel. There used to be a railway line that was next to the depot to but that is long gone too.
The pies and vanilla slices were excellent.

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.

Michelini Wines Myrtleford

Michelini Wines. Our last stop before the wet, six and a half hour, 650 kilometre drive back to Sydney.

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.

The butter factory, Myrtleford

Breakfast at The Butter Factory.

Range 4

Yellow box honey - blancmange, parfait, and 2 types of honey comb.

Range 3

Range 2 - the mains

Terrine of duck and saltbush shoulder of lamb on polenta with parsnip. No sign of swine flu though.

Range

Spanner crab souffle and celeriac in bisque and a charcoutrie platter - duck liver pate, sausage, quail stuffed with mousse, pork terrine and brioche.

Getting ready

Motel on Alpine and Range Restaurant

We're eating here tonight. 2 hats and best country restaurant. Nice fire going in the outdoor BBQ patio too. The beer is a local Beechworth brew.

Country Footy

Myrtleford v Albury. Myrtleford lost by a lazy 33 goals. 37.24.246 to 4.4.28. Holy shit.

Albury's Border Mail has an article about the debacle here. More articles about issues with the club here, here and here. The poor old Saints are doing it tough at the moment. They are struggling to field a reserve grade team and "borrowed" a couple of Albury players to make up the numbers. The thirds are apparently doing well though.

Choc and hazelnut tart

Plump Harvest Produce in Myrtleford. Myrtleford was our destination by the way. Almost exactly 7 hours driving time from Sydney.