Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I got such a surprise today… I knew that Google Street Views had hit Australia some months ago, but expected that only the main cities and towns would be covered. I also assumed that if they got as far as the little town where we live, that they’d propbably only photograph the main street that runs through town.

Not so.

I was looking up a local address on Google Maps, and lo and behold, I found that there was a Street View button! It looks like many of our town’s streets have been photographed. Based on the weather for the pictures in our street, the fact that some garbage and recycling bins were still out, the greenness (or otherwise) of the gardens, and a couple of other clues, I figured they came through sometime in autumn (between March and June 2008), possibly on a  Wednesday or perhaps a Thursday.

Then I went looking to see if they’d also photographed the estate where we hope to build, and they’d done that too. This time though, I think they came on a different day—there were a lot of clouds in the sky and the grass was yellow and dry like it is over summer. The roof was on on our friends’ house in the estate, so that should give some sort of time scale.

Google Street Views in our little town. Who’da thought?!