Bovine beauties basked under a summer sky, nestling idyllically in the daisies that dotted a lush green paddock.

"Look at those contented cows", I remarked to Michelle, who replied, "Well, have you ever seen a discontented cow?". And I didn't say a word, but still, the discontented cow was not very happy.

At our house we've entered a relatively new phase of life, one we enjoy immensely, being empty-nesters, we have discovered what a delightful teenager our cat is.

One of the things we noticed when we had human teenagers in the house, and over the years there were quite a few to choose from, was when it came time to do dishes, someone, usually one of the boys, would have the sudden urge, vanish from the kitchen and promptly reappear online.

This became so predictable that the smallest room in the house became known as the Facebook Room.

This prompted a further discussion and if there was anyone in our house I could talk crap with, it was our son Nick. We could develop a social media toilet app, we thought, with ratings and reviews on toilet paper and air fresheners, one where people could connect and chat while they sat. Nick's idea of a 'flash before you flush' feature was genius, where the app would analyse a photo and suggest a way to improve diet.

After brainstorming for a name, we came up with Faecesbook.

While visiting the Facebook Room recently I came across an album of interesting photos of 1950s, '60s and '70s Launceston by an old-timer photographer by the name of H. B. Fowler. The pictures were of ordinary street scenes and were fascinating for the period and the long-demolished buildings they captured.

I find this sort of 'then and now' thing really interesting and as it was a hot summer evening, I resolved to ride my bike around town and find some of the sites to see what they looked like now.

It was initially just a little project for my interest, but as I stood at the corner of Charles and Cameron streets, looking at a photo of an old petrol station that stood next to Macquarie House, where the fountain is now, I wondered if The Examiner might make more of it.

This is exactly what reporter Brin Duggan did here.

When I'm out and about for The Examiner, I often shoot ordinary street scenes for this exact purpose. One day in the future when I'm dead and buried, and someone who hasn't even been born yet will find the collection of street scenes I've shot over the past decade and go around and stand where I stood to take their own now photo.

This future Phil will likely have a few challenges that I didn't have, such as having to wear a radioactive suit as they step around zombie corpses.

Reshooting the Macquarie House pictures turned out to be a bit trickier than first anticipated. While the original image looked like they'd been taken with a 50mm lens, I intended to shoot with a 14mm lens and overlay the old picture onto the new wide angle picture.

Looking at the photo on the tablet screen, I thought I was standing in the exact spot on the corner of Cameron Street as I lined up the roof line of Macquarie house with the corner of the Telstra building, however, when it came to overlaying the picture, it became apparent Mr Fowler stood on the road to take his picture.

When it came to the front on shot, I had my back to the wall of a fence surrounding construction work at Henty House, and the veranda obscured the top of the old house, which meant distorting the perspective to line the images up more closely..

Further along, I stood in the middle of what was 1950s Cameron Street to photograph the site of the Mechanics Institute.

I got this angle completely wrong, but rather than just delete the mistake, I adjusted the perspective to fit into the street, cutting the side wall to show what is behind the facade today.

As I pedalled along Paterson Street, I found it easy to find where Mr Fowler would have stood in his c 1970s picture of what is now Birchalls car park.

At the site of the police station, the Magistrates Court windows were visible, but not knowing exactly which windows they were meant there was a distance of about 20 metres along Cimitiere Street that it could have been taken from.

By the time I got further along Cameron Street to the car park opposite Grand Chancellor, I was finding the images much easier to align.

At the corner of Brisbane and George, now the ANZ bank, I carefully lined up windowsills and windows at right to take the photo, but was still a metre or two away from the spot Mr Fowler stood and while the overlay was close, it wasn't exact.

I guessed the location of this last one in Charles Street by the wall of what looked to me like the library on the left, and a steeple of Pilgrim church at right. It blended beautifully, so if I have it wrong, at least I did a good job of getting it wrong!

So good luck, future Phil, whether you be human or robot, I hope you enjoy lining up my photos with your holograms of 2070 Launceston as much as I did with Mr Fowler's photos.