Day 3 on the Robertson Common - nearly blown away.

The long weekend festivities continued today, with the CTC's "Spud Olympics", and then music from the CTC's house bands, and some young musicians from the Southern Highlands, and then local group Sluice.

Ella, all face-painted up,
and ready to party at the Spud Olympics,
part of the "Springtime in Robertson" festival.

Local Kids, including Jed, Murray and George,

on top of the Flugelman sculpture.
Kids throwing potatoes to the waiting crowd below
as an informal part of the CTC's "Spud Olympics"

Nirvana catching Spuds being thrown to her.

We were nearly blown off the Robertson Common at the Robertson Heritage Railway Station. Winds were worse today than on the previous 2 days. I was amazed, tonight, to hear an Emergency Services spokesperson on the radio advising people about how to deal with strong winds. This after the entire weekend of strong, almost gale force winds - here in Robertson. In terms of "warnings" and "Community services" this is TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE.

What has the Bureau of Meteorology been doing over the weekend? Local ABC News broadcasts prior to the weekend were predicting that the winds would ease on Saturday afternoon. Instead the winds increased in speed, and potential danger. Today's ABC news reports damage from wind, and fires - reported after the event, but not predicted. Hopeless, and totally useless as a "service".

The Southern Highlands is badly served by both the Bureau and the ABC's News services, when it comes to weather alerts. This is even more strongly the case when it comes to long weekends, when local ABC services are "amalgamated". Today the Local ABC's morning program emanated from Canberra, where the host, Andrea Close, disputed a caller's comment that the NSW Flag had been replaced by the Victorian Flag on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. "I don't think so!" - she said. Trouble was, Andrea obviously did not know was that this story had just been broadcast on the ABC Sydney radio news, just before the State-wide broadcast (from Canberra) kicked in.

If Andrea did not know that, what chance was there that she would be able to provide local weather warnings? The ABC's fabled "8 cents a day" gets reduced to 2 cents a day's worth of content on these "holiday" broadcasting programs. People in the Southern Highlands and Illawarra and Sydney and the Central Coast all deserve better service from the ABC than this.

Back to the Music in the Marquee, where we were sheltering from the strong winds.

Brian, Jane and Mark performing.

Lucy and Charlotte, during the early evening music program.

Part of the Lantern Parade, which was lovely.People carried their home made lanterns, mostly made under Jane's supervision.We followed a pathway illuminated by paper bag lanterns (with sand and tea light candles).

"Sluice" performing after the lantern parade -

as the last act of the music program in the Marquee.

And that was the end of the program of events for this long weekend (except for a lot of photo processing work for me, before I could publish this blog entry).