The mighty August Winds are on schedule.

Robertson nearly blew away last night.

Regular readers will realise that the occasional references to the "August Winds" are something of an on-going Robertson joke. The "August Winds" can blow any time from May to December. Last night, they blew on schedule. That's pretty unusual - really!

Our winds were classed officially as "gale force" which is pretty exciting. It is a relatively rare event, to be officially described as such. It equates to Force 8 on the Beaufort Scale, with wind speeds between 63 - 75 Km/h or between 34 - 40 Knots.

Fortunately, we survived this, without any power outages.

Macquarie Pass was blocked by a fallen tree overnight, but that's not surprising, given the huge trees which line that famous mountain pass, down the Illawarra Escarpment. The Illawarra suffered considerable power outages, but they are not as used to wind as we are, and so perhaps their trees are less adapted to excessive wind.

Anyway, this afternoon, the weather broke enough to allow Dorothy and Jasmine to take a few minutes off to test out the wonderful new park bench which has been installed by the local community group, beside the Big Potato. Allan Hollis and Paul, our Village Postmaster, had fixed the new table and bench seats into position yesterday. They assured me they are fixed onto several reinforced slabs of concrete which are deeply buried. And anyway, the table itself required the use of Nat Waters's backhoe to move it - it is that heavy. Lets hope it survives the attention of vandals.Talking of which, persons who know me may be shocked to learn that I used the "F... Word" to day, in public, and at full volume. Something like "Hey You ... Get the F... out of there!" was heard to echo up and down Hoddle Street. I did it with deliberate intent, for I was ordering off a car load of what were once known as "callow youths". They had got out of their car, and run around to the back of the "Big Spud", and were proceeding to try to kick in the walls which Allan had put up, just a few weeks ago, to close off the original doorways - which had long since been vandalised.

When the doors at the back of the Big Spud were open, it allowed all sorts of vandalism to occur, and other illegal and illicit activities to occur inside. That was why the whole thing was a concern to the Chamber of Commerce, and many other local residents. That's precisely why the refurbishment of the Big Spud has been undertaken.

But even I (who am not easily shocked) was stunned to see these little idiots trying to kick in the new panels - in full daylight, and in full view of a group of other people. Fortunately Allan appears to have done a good job of reinforcing the concrete and mesh which he used to close off the original doorways.Allan Hollis closing over the original doorways in the Big Potato on 14 July 2008. Fortunately he has applied a number of very thick layers of render, over a solid and reinforced base structure. This wall panel withstood its first attack, today (with a little help from the "F... Word").