Early in the morning of December 7, 2025 an intense bushfire came towards the northern edge of Redhead, my suburb. Our house was 400m downwind of the front. At 2 am we received a text alert: “too late to leave, shelter in your home”. We slept through it. The next morning there was smoke in the air and light ash was falling. Charred leaves were scattered around our home.

Quelling the fire

Include:
– extent of fire and firefighting activities [kml map]
– RFS response – number of units, people, stations (eg Kariong)
– threat to age care facility
– helicopters and water bombing [flight tracks data visualisation]

Capturing the recovering environment

Include:
– Learning how to 3D capture [delay before good captures and considered strategy]
– What to capture [detail views and which areas and plants recover in sequence]

Repeated captures of the same scene can be presented in different immersive and/or interactive ways. For example 5 captures over 3 months [below] show the greening of the Angophora tree canopy [see below]:

With ground based photography and photogrammetry techniques, or the use of a scanning app (e.g. Scaniverse), detailed close scenes have been 3D captured – individual trees or shrubs as they recover or small areas of ground. This patch of ground, for example, that has been annotated in the Supersplat website: https://superspl.at/scene/f28ee32e [screenshot below]

Or the 100s of discarded objects revealed by the fire that show a long history of a different social relationship with the bushland environment.

Challenge

Include:
– establish an overrarching theme:
1) Integrate with the You Are Here systems at a local or bioregion level [You Are Here project]?
2) Exploration of Panarchy themes of recovery and resilience [https://www.resalliance.org/panarchy]?
– explore collaboration potential, e.g. indigenous perspective
– integrate this content in a cohesive way to support the theme
– develop various formats – standard and immersive video, screen and immersive interactive.