Google Earth - my NZ past

Was stuffing around with Google Earth yesterday and decided to try and see if I could view places from when I was a kid in New Zealand. Amazingly, there's quite a bit available. The street view is incredible how you can zoom around and all. Felt like I was looking back in time, but so much had changed too.

This was the primary school I went to. Is in Alton, Taranaki. A small rural little town. You can see the country road that we'd walk home from school down. Dunno what the boat's doing there. (click to enlarge).

When we moved from the farm into town, this was the house we moved into. Looks like paradise doesn't it. Unfortunately if it was to be any kind of paradise it would require at the very least a functional father. Was a half acre section, mostly planted with lawn. Us kids used to have to mow the lawn every weekend using two lawnmowers, would take half a day as the grass there grows like mad. The house has changed a bit, looks like a deck been made around the front.

This is the local beach. Ack. Bet New Zealand doesn't sound so glamorous now. Black sand with big rocks. This is from the top of a cliff in the carpark, the Google car must have gone right down there. Amazing to think that I can look at that now on the PC. We hardly ever went to the beach anyway, mum liked it but for dad it just made him remember WW2 and planes flying over.