Two of these images are from Google Maps Streetview, 2007 and 2023. The final image is from yesterday.

When we first moved in in 2015, our letterbox looked like this:

The Streetview image is from 2007, that's what it looked like in 2015, although the background had changed quite a lot. The extensive chestnut farm in the photo in the next door property no longer had any trees...that place was point zero in the outbreak of chestnut blight, and all those magnificent trees had been ripped out and burnt. It was a bare/grassy paddock when we moved in.

The small pine tree in the corner of our driveway was only two metres high in 2007. It was a lot bigger in 2015, and is even bigger now.

The letterbox was, I think, an old rubbish bin, metal, weighed a lot! It was welded onto a metal post, very rusted and the old Registered Mail Box (RMB) number painted on the side facing the road. RMB numbers aren't used any more along our strip of the Great Alpine Road, the postal service and deliveries use the street number.

We renovated it after we moved in. It was derusted and painted, then decorated with flowers which we made from cutting petals out of plastic tubs and large tins cans. It was handy to be able to tell people it was the place with the giant daffodils as a letterbox.

I never thought to take any photos of it at the time, when it was fresh. But it didn't last long. By the time the next Streetview image was taken, it was starting to look a bit bashed up. The plastic degraded in sunlight and became brittle, then bit by bit the petals fragmented off. It got hit by the lawnmower which distorted the metal flowers and smashed off the plastic petals much faster than just solar degrading.. The bin lid, which had previously been welded on to be a sort-of verandah, got knocked sideways. In the end it looked like:

Then last week we had a parcel delivered. I went out to pick it up. There were tire marks next to the post box, and it had fallen sideways off its pedestal. I figured a fast-moving delivery vehicle had collided with the box. You can complain to the delivery company, but they would have denied it and the guaranteed-to-fail process is just irritating.

But this time instead of flowers we just Hunderwasser'd it. It looks ok, as of yesterday.

We'll see how long it lasts!