I did spend a week in county Victoria helping out with a group of about 200 people completing various projects and helping out where they could with Bushfire Relief. It was a fairly emotional time, particularly in Marysville – to see the devastation in the town, had to be seen to be believed and felt. Look over the town from a nearby hill, it looks like a new estate with slabs the only thing really visible – sadly its all some people were left with. The terrain around the area is intriguing, I wont say nice because it is far from nice but it is interesting and makes you glad for what you have. It was cold and wet for the first few days we were up there, but we had a place to stay and a house to go back too, some people are still living in tents and caravans. The recovery will be long, houses can be rebuilt in time, but the scenery will be take a long time to repair. I would like to go back again, at least to drive through and see how it is going, and plan to do so on the way to or from the Winton V8 Supercar round next year I think.

Below are some of the photos that I took, didn’t take heaps, because it felt weird taking photos of people’s loss.

Also being quite busy getting my veggie garden happening, got all my plants in and dripper system in on the weekend of 17/18 October. I planted 4 Might Red Tomato’s, 8 Roma Tomato’s, 6 corn, 8 capsicum, 6 zucchini and some bok choy. The bok choy has been eaten by what looks like birds or caterpillars, same with some zucchini but not as bad and one roma tomato plant has gone missing. Hopefully by Christmas I will be picking home grown veggies. In a separate garden I have 4 new chili plants and a strawberry plant (which has sort of split into 3 plants) from last year. I will hopefully be picking strawberries soon – there is only a few but they are ripening – photo will come of gardens and the first fruits.

It was a great weekend, although Holden did officially win the round – Ford did win 2 of the races and 2 Ford drivers were on equal points for the lead with Holden, so it was ok.

It was nice to get away for a few days and not have to worry about work or anything else.

Some of my V8 Photos

Some of my other photos

Going on current results, Casey will have already won the Championship but hopefully it will still be a great weekend. We are hoping that Bangers (one of the 3 going) will be able to organise us some pit tickets so we can go in and actually meet Casey – keeping my fingers crossed. One of the guys at work is a bit jealous, but he is heading over there today for a ride day on Friday – lucky bugger.

I will still more than likely head over for V8 Supercars in November, MotoGP will be great but V8 Supercars are still pretty good on the Island. GO CASEY!!!

Didn’t do as many trips whilst I was away, with the price of petrol at the moment, I just decided against it and mainly stayed around the Yarrawonga area and in the unit watching the limited Foxtel channels that I had available. Whilst it was good to have access to Foxtel I don’t think I will be getting it in a hurry at home – during basketball season maybe but even then I think it would be a waste of time. Well sadly it is back to work on Monday – I synced my PDA and I have 550 emails – that is going to be fun to go through Monday morning.

Well I am going back to watching the finale 3 episodes of 24 and catching up on the rest of the TV episodes that I need to.

Yarrawonga is on the banks of Lake Mulwala which is a man made lake, part of the Murray River. Mulwala is also the name of the town on the opposite side of the River in NSW, a bit like Albury Wodonga, Echuca Moama, they are effectively one town, but because the Murray is the NSW/Victoria border so they are seperate towns.

I chose this location instead of Mansfield due to the location near the Murray and my desire to get some photos of the Murray in it’s current drought state. I am staying at Murray Valley Resort – its actual location is 36° 1′11.50″S 145°59′41.74″E. It looks like an ok place, from the sky at least . Well that is it for now, lunch has finished I gotta get back to watching live timing, I mean gotta get back to work

Thursday
Drove over, left a bit earlier than I usually do – that meant I missed the peak traffic at Deer Park over West Gate Bridge etc, but got a lot of the school traffic along Dandenong Road and in Dandy which slowed me down but that was about it.

Friday
Headed on down to the track wasn’t in a huge rush – it was hot and the Main guys weren’t out till later. Tried to find some shade to watch practice from – but couldn’t find too much, I watched from within the pit area near the control tower for some of the time and also from along the front straight on the outside of the track. Hang around for quite awhile after the race because I wanted to get a couple of photographs that I had printed from last years round at PI by Russell Ingall and Craig Lowndes – met Kenny (see post below). Went back to the unit to try and cool down.

Saturday
Parked the car at the track side parking around the back of the circuit between Siberia and the Hay Shed – some where close to where Skaife tried to take out Lowndes in race 1. Manage to park the car next to 2 car loads of South Australians which made for a fun day. It was quite hot again and it was also very smoky from some very big fires in the North East of Victoria – according to the BOM it was only 29&deg but there wasn’t a lot of breeze most of the day and in the sun it was hot. Lowndes managed to finish in front of Kelly so the gap closed to only 3 points in the championship

Sunday
Parked in the general admission car park again, went over into the pits again, to get some photos on the grid and of the drivers parade – and there was some shade, relief from the 36&deg temp. Race 2 saw Tander blocking Lowndes and given a black flag – once again Tom Walkinshaw Performance Group Cars holding Lowndes up, Kelly and Lowndes entered the final race of the day and the championship level oen points. The stage was set for and thrilling finale until on Lap 4 Kelly nudged Lowndes from behind while Lowndes was deep under breaks, this caused Lowndes to crash into the back of the other Kelly brother and Davison behind them had no where to go and slammed into Lowndes ending any championship hope Lowndes had. Kelly was finally given a drive through penalty but Lowndes was out of the running with destroyed steering and circulated to finish 31st in the race – with Kelly the shallowest of victories in V8 Supercar history.

It was a farce that nothing more could be done to Kelly for ruining the race and what should have been a great weekend of racing. Kelly didn’t have the speed and the only way for him to win the championship was for Lowndes to be out of the race. Uncle Tom Walkinshaw (don’t know why everyone calls him that, I would prefer something a little stronger than that) told Rick to Win It or Bin It – well he did both, he won it and he binned Lowndes’ car. How is that not bringing the sport into disrepute – but no because he is a Holden man and it’s Holden’s turn it is alright. I don’t think so, and many people didn’t think the actions were right either – Holden and Ford fans were booing Rick when he was presented with the trophy – everyone knew that a driver who didn’t win a round all year compared to 4 for Lowndes, only won 1 race all year doesn’t deserve the championship.

Monday
Drove home quite annoyed at how race 3 panned out.

Aussie Bernie – clean up your championship before people start turning off – you didn’t get a record crowd at PI despite your close championship, perhaps people are starting to see through you. It’s time to go Tony “Mr Holden” Cochrane.

It will be an interesting and tense weekend – Rick Kelly leading the Championship by only 7 points to Craig Lowndes makes for a great weekend.  Craig definitely deserves the championship having won more rounds than Rick, and Rick is a constant whinger when things dont go his way.

I am hoping to get a bit of a tour around a Ford garage – unfortunately at Winton I was offered the opportunity but due to having to check in by 5pm on the Friday I didn’t get the chance.  Haven’t really decided where I will watch the racing from but Friday & Sunday will most likely be from the main straight and Saturday will probably be from either the Southern Sweeper or Siberia.  From what I have read Siberia is a great corner that you can see from the first corner through the sweeper into Honda and then through Siberia across the Hey Shed and then they disappear to Lukey Heights.  They don’t have a big screen out there but they don’t have one at the souther sweeper either – I’ll just have to make sure I take my radio so I can listen to the on track commentary.

I have put up some photos from the U2 Concert into my gallery but they are really only just the ones that are in the U2 post.

Well have fun, I will – and this year will be the first year in at least 10 years that I haven’t been involved in a Carols Clovey is having one on Sunday when I will be at Phillip Island – I am not that disappointed though.  Hopefully we can build up the Clovey Carols to one day again take over the TTG Carols, we seem to have the people power to do it, we just need the vision and desire to move forward.

The Resort from the “Lake”

A pump on the bed of the “lake”

I finally found some water

So as you can see it is rather depressing state of affairs. Lake Eildon is actually a man made reservoir and it is supposed to be used by the residents of Victoria for its water, there must be some other reservoirs around the place cos Lake Eildon has nothing.

It is a similar story in Bonnie Doon.

Lake Eildon at Bonnie Doon

Whilst also staying in the area I decided to drive up to Mt Buller hoping that there would be snow there, and it was only a 40km drive. 20km of that 40km drive was the worst and the best road at the same time, it was 20km long and about 1500m up to the summit so it was a very windy road, it would be very scary when it was covered in snow lucky for me there was no snow or ice on the road. Unlucky for me it was a week before ski season starts and you couldnt get up to the top without a trade permit or a workers pass there was no snow anyway, they were testing out the snow makers so i did see that from a distance at least. It was very cold and getting even colder particularly the morning I left and I reckon it might also have a bit of natural snow in time for the weekend – but alas I still havent seen snow.

In general I didnt do a lot it was a relaxing few days and I headed home Wednesday.