Bird's eye historical photographs of Bay now online thanks to Retrolens

Mount Maunganui, February 1943. Image/Sourced from http://retrolens.nz and licensed by LINZ.

Has the street you lived on changed over the years? There's a new fun and easy way to find out.

A treasure trove of bird's eye-view photographs taken since the 1930s are now available to the public online.

The new website shows how much the Bay has changed over the past 80 years using hundreds of thousands of aerial photographs.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council has worked with other councils to put together Retrolens, providing free access to photos which would otherwise sit on a shelf gathering dust.

On the website people can type in any place or street name or scroll around the city on the map on the left-hand side. On the right-and side, photographs of the area will appear.

Regional council geospatial team leader Glen Clarkin said Retrolens was a great project for the council to be a part of.

By collaborating with other councils, a public resource had been created that would have otherwise been unaffordable to individual councils, he said.

"Historical imagery is incredibly important for a variety of reasons, including showing changes in land use, identifying where dangerous chemicals may have been used, showing coastline changes and archaeology and cultural research."

Mr Clarkin said it was also "a fun tool" for people to check out what their area, street or neighbourhood looked like decades ago.

The images on Retrolens were sourced from a parallel project which was digitising the Crown's archive of historical aerial photographs to preserve them.

Long-standing Tauranga resident Ingrid Wicksteed, who has lived here on and off for 50 years, said changes in the city had been tremendous and more exciting times were ahead.

Her parents arrived in Tauranga in the 1930s when the population was about 3000 people.

She remembered The Strand and Devonport Rd as the main retail areas - with a drapery, men's outfitters, a Woolworth's and the children's favourite ice cream parlour.

Otumoetai was all farms and orchards, with 15 families living in the area dairying or growing citrus fruit.

It all turned residential in the 1960s and 1970s, Ms Wicksteed said.

She remembered travelling over to Mount Maunganui the long way through Welcome Bay.

"We would troop over from Otumoetai to the Mount - it was just a little port with a few ships or coastal boats.

"There was a woman on the beach with donkeys, it was a big excitement taking a donkey ride on the beach."

Tauranga had become a thriving place and had gone forward in leaps and bounds, she said.

The "retirement capital of New Zealand" stigma was wearing off as more young families came into the area.

As Papamoa continued to extend "tremendously" Ms Wicksteed thought eventually Tauranga and Te Puke would blend into each other, along with Omokoroa, creating one big conglomerate.

Ms Wicksteed thought Retrolens was an interesting idea, but said Tauranga needed a memorabilia centre to put all the amazing memorabilia stored away by council on show.

Retrolens website: http://retrolens.nz/map/