What is this?>

Aerial images of Burnie, Tasmania, taken around 1946 and 1950-1951.

Where did the images come from?

I scanned a number of prints while I was volunteering at the Burnie Regional Museum some time ago. Originally, I believe they were taken by/for the state government, who have their own page about the history of aerial photography in Tasmania with more information: https://dpipwe.tas.gov.au/land-tasmania/aerial-photography/history-of-aerial-photography-in-tasmania

When were the photographs taken?

I don't have exact dates. There's no matches in DPIPWE's online aerial photo index and I never bothered to ask them directly. Instead I did some research, mostly through Trove.

• One set of imagery has a number of partially-built structures - most of the 'Terrylands sub-division', for instance. The Hotel Regent is under construction site on the corner of King Street and North Terrace (now the site of the Mallee Grill). An Advocate article from November 1950 describes the site as 'cleared, the block fenced and foundations commenced, and materials were on the site', which matches the aerial image pretty well. There is also construction in Burnie Port, on the northernmost wharf (referred to, at least then, as 'Ocean Wharf'); additional Advocate articles with images here and here and an early article here indicate that this widening of the 'viaduct' began around September 1950, and they don't seem to have been working for too long when the aerial photo was taken. So it's probably in the last few months of 1950.
• The other imagery is missing residential areas that are present in the 1951 images, so it's clearly earlier. It also doesn't have the cricket pitch in Upper Burnie (off Southwell Street), putting it in early 1947 at the latest. And it's hard to see detail but I think the "infant block" at the Burnie State School has only just started construction, which would place it in 1946. (Compare this photo from December 1946, particularly that rounded section, to the completed structure in the 1950 imagery.)

At some point I will try to find more accurate dates, but it's not a priority for now.

I found a glitch!

That's not surprising, there's plenty. The 1946 map has some stitching errors where the photographs don't line up and it doesn't match real geography in some areas. The 1950 map should be very accurate in terms of alignment, but it has anomalies around complicated shapes like clusters of trees or the smoke from the pulp mill, and some lines that should be straight might look 'dented' or 'sliced'. There are also some small gaps or odd omissions, corresponding to photographs missing from the BRM collection. I've done about as well as I can, considering my budget for the project was basically $0.

How did you make this?

I started with large prints from the Burnie Regional Museum's collection - square, about ten inches on a side. These were digitised with their equipment. The 1950 photographs were high enough quality and had just enough overlap that I was able to use photogrammetry software - specifically, a trial version of Pix4D. I couldn't do the same with the 1946 photographs, so I treated them as a normal panorama (stitching with Microsoft Image Composite Editor). QGIS was useful for some touch-ups and additional processing.

What's the copyright status of the images?

Under Australian copyright law, all photographs taken before 1955 are in the public domain. https://www.nla.gov.au/how-long-does-copyright-last

Can I have a copy?

Yes, but be warned - they're very big. The 1950 image is 3418 megapixels at full resolution, and some computers/phones/tablets might not be able to open it. The 1946 image is tiny in comparison at a mere 400 megapixels. If you're still interested, I've uploaded them to the Internet Archive - 1946 here and 1950 here.