REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Wednesday, April 4, 2007

WE’VE come a long way, baby. While residents watched the Gold Coast grow from the ground up since the late 1990s, bird’s-eye photos showed just how amazing the change has been.

Our city had sprawled farther than many would have imagined since 2003.

But the incredible, highresolution satellite images, released as part of the Capturing the South East project, showed not just the big picture, but every little detail of our urban explosion – down to the trees in our own back yards.

The project – a partnership between SEQ Catchments, Geoscience Australia, the Queensland Government and Burnett Mary Regional Group – used images captured in mid2006 by the SPOT 5 Earth observation satellite to give an up-to-date picture of developments on the ground across the southeast.

Phil Tickle, of Geoscience Australia, said the Coast was the standout city when comparing the state-of-the-art images with the old.

He said although previous aerial images did not show details of development, the overall picture was one of amazing expansion.

“While the quality of the older images is nowhere near as good, you can clearly see how much cities like the Coast have grown,” he said.

“It’s actually quite frightening how fast we’ve spread.

“It also gives the Government a very good indication of where the SEQ footprint is right and wrong.

“From the looks of these images, it’s going to be very hard to stop this growth.”