You'll find some photos quickly taken across the Waranga Basin and from which a panorama was created using Windows Live Photo Gallery in the Waranga Basin Sep 8 photo album (the name is close...).

To see how to start using the Windows Live Photo Gallery (you can download it from here, along with other Windows Live programs such as Live Messenger, Mail, Writer and Toolbar), see Live Photo Gallery - getting started - from camera to panorama on webDotWiz Online Has a Space.

Here's a preview of the panorama:

Posted with Windows Live Writer.

The Rushworth Bird Festival is part of Rushworth's Easter Saturday community festival.

See rushworthbirdfestival.spaces.live.com for more details of what's on and when on Saturday April 7. 

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Rushworth Bird Festival, Easter 2007

The median strip on High Street in Rushworth (said to be the site for shops in the really early days) is grassed and has some old deciduous trees.

But the long drought is having a sad effect on these trees, one in particular, which has been losing its leaves over the past couple of weeks. The photo below was taken last week on Tue or Wed, Feb 6 or 7, 2007):

There's an album of a few photos taken by one of the volunteer firefighters who was attending to bushfires down in Gippsland around Howitville near Dargo.

Here's one:

While the townies (ie., those living in Rushworth) have enjoyed some good falls (i.e., the rain can be measured in millimetres, not drips or drops), out here we've been missed and bypassed in comparison.

Yesterday afternoon, however, we got the edge of a rain event (the new lingo from the weather people) that passed to the northeast. It was probably just as well we only felt the edge - there was a lot of huff and puff (strong, gusty winds).

This morning the radar is/was looking very favourable but we're yet to experience what it's promising (light to moderate rain falls). Here's the radar from a few minutes ago (The Waranga Basin is between Tatura and Bendigo but closer to Tatura).

There were about 4 buckets of rain this morning out here while in Rushworth, they had about 8 mm. What are we doing wrong out this part of the world?

Anyway, here's what the radar is showing at the moment (it's moving our way) so we might get some tonight.

Here comes 2007.

Best wishes for 2007 to one and all.

What will be the biggest event for excitement in 2007? How about it rains for a complete day instead of just a few minutes... and once it starts for a day, steady rain for a few weeks to catch up.

This morning the smoke was back - not as bad as it was a week or two ago, but it was here.

Over the past five or six days, winds have been from the sou'-west and swinging to the south so we've been smoke-free.

However, overnight the high pressure system moved further eastwards, bringing winds around to the sou'-east and thus moving smoke over here.

Although the fires have subdued somewhat due to a few millimtres of rain and cooler weather, they're still burning.

The weather forecast for the next week or so has more hot weather arriving (in the mid thirties) so that will mean the fires becoming stronger again.

A Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2007.

The link below takes you to a map showing the main towns and landmarks on the edge of the fire area.

As of 24-Dec-2006, approximately 800 000 hectares had been burnt. The current weather forecast is not predicting sufficient rain to extinguish these fires so they will burn for some time to come... and there are two more months of summer, so it could be April before all fires are completely extinguished. Of course, there will be lots of wind changes and hot days before then and towns and property will be threatened time and again.

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My Live Search Maps collection

Mansfield, Victoria, Australia

Merijig

Mount Buller
Ski resort. Been under threat at different times.

Tolmie

Whitfield

Cheshunt

Paradise Falls

Dandongadale
Control centre of the Great Divide Complex North which contains 50 fires which have burnt 344,000 hectares (to 24-Dec-2006).

Bright
Fires burnt out around this area in January 2003.

Mount Buffalo Chalet
Been under threat at different times. The Chalet is a heritage building.

Mount Beauty

Gaffneys Creek

Jamieson

Kevington
Site of the famous Kevington Hilton Hotel (also known as the Poplar Arms). Mt. Terrible is close and fires have been burning there for the past 3 weeks (as of 24-Dec-2006).

Woods Point
Been under threat several times.

Howqua
Been under threat several times, especially in the past week.

Eurobin

Licola
Has been under threat of the fires for the duration, thus far.

Valencia Creek
Been under threat several times.

Dargo, Gippsland



Your scratch pad has been truncated.

The fires over at Mansfield, Whitfield, Jamieson, and surrounding areas, produced smoke on the water Basin all day today (Wed 13-Dec-2006), as well around Rushworth and other towns. There was just enough strength in the easterlies to bring plenty over. The forecast is that the winds will go around to the north - and that means higher temperatures .

Here's the sun trying to poke through this morning at about 0800:

Smoke from the bushfires to the east of Waranga Basin arrived overnight as a light wind went around to the south-east and east.

At about 6.30 am, the sun was blocked out and until 8.30 am when I left to travel the 10 km into Rushworth, the other side of the Basin could be seen. However, during the morning the smoke thickened in Rushworth itself as the wind dropped and on returning home at about 2 pm, the smoke had completely blocked out the other side of the Basin.

The photo below was taken at about 5.30 pm from the edge of the Basin about five minutes walk from my block. Visibility at that time was about 500 m at the most.

At the time of writing - 1915 - there's just the slightest breath of wind and the smoke haze is still thick.

Tomorrow the expected temperature is 40 degree C as the wind swings around to the north. Sunday's weather is prediced to be similar.

With no rain in the near future to slow down the fires, authorities expect some of the fires to join and create a firefront of 100 km.

Click the map below to go to Windows Live Maps. There are some pushpins where home is (about 150 km away from the fires) and major fires are burning around Whitfield in the Ovens Valley, Mansfield and Jamieson.

The Weather Bureau have forecast some rain and some is showing on the radar but it's not getting to the ground here.

Try this...

1. Go to http://www.google.com/ (just click the link to open a new browser windows)

2. Type in "search" (without the quotes)

3. Click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

via Nigel Parker.

You'll see this posted soon on my other spaces.

We'll do two things at once - announce the Open Gardens event and use the Windows Live Writer Event Extension (we used to call these types of things plugins). Well, here goes...

When I clicked on Insert Event... from the Insert pane on the right of Live Writer's screen, up popped a dialogue which I could have used to search for an event or, as in this case, I made a new entry for Rushworth Open Gardens, filling in details such as the name of the event, its date and location. I was also able to attach a photo and link to the site where the event is being promoted. All very easy and convenient .

Over the past few years of drought, the original wall of Eilden Weir (now called Eildon Dam) has been visible. As well, one tower of the original spillway has also appeared from the murky depths. This old wall is behind the new one built in the 1950's when Eildon was expanded in capacity (along with other dams such as the Hume Dam on the Murray River above Albury).

The photos below appeared on the front page of The Australasian Pictorial, July 27, 1929 (this newspaper, among others, was found in a box when cleaning up).

The writeup accompanying the photos was:

Costly Repairs to Eildon (V.) Weir

Two picture illustrating the work which is being done at the Eildon Weir to repair damage caused through susbsidence of the clay and rock fills on the upstream side of the dam. So far 1,500,000 pounds has been spent on the weir and the repair work is estimated to cost between 250,000 and 300,000 pounds.

At the top is a view of the dam with the tram tracks and general repair work.

Below is a more intimate view of the core wall, showing how the filling has subsided. The tram tracks carries truck loads of rock to build up the sunken filling. Because the core wall is 4 ft. 6in. out of line at the top it is feared that the wall may have been fractured horizontally between the bedrock and the top of the filling.

Interestingly, just a few years ago the Hume Dam had to be repaired to solve a similar problem (the Hume must have been enlarged by building up the old wall, whereas Eildon Dam had a completely new wall and spillway).

Here we go. By the way, I've made my first entry to my webDotWiz Space using Live Writer and now have swtiched over to my Waranga Basin Space here with just one click - no need to sign out of Live Messenger, sign in with my other Live ID and then load this Space. Easy.

Waranga Basin, Rushworth, AU

To insert this map, I used the Insert Map... wizard. When the Local Live map tool loaded, I entered my address to search for - I discovered that my town is Waranga, not Rushworth, in the data base! I stayed with Road view because of my slow ISDN internet connection.

In the same way as on Local Live, I added a pushpin and up popped the little info box so I entered a title a couple of lines of notes.

All the usual Live Local nav arrows and zoom in/out features are available so I zoomed out a bit until Rushworth was located on the map.

Then I clicked Insert and you're looking at the result after a couple of other tweaks.

After clicking Insert, a task pane on the right gave me more options - I chose the place the map on the left with text wrap and I adjusted the right margin a few pixels. As well I gave the map a title, Waranga Basin, Rushworth, AU.

The longest part of the whole process? Jotting down how I did it.

Oops, when first published, I lost the text wrapping after publishing. I've resized the map a touch so we'll try again.