December 10 2017

It may be 15 days to go until Christmas 2017 but the people of Deniliquin are already in a festive mood thanks to the The Edward River Christmas Fair and Carols by Candlelight that was held today at Waring Gardens.

Temperatures were in the low 30’s during the Christmas Fair but it did not drive away fair goers who attended the event throughout the afternoon.

Those who went to the Fair (aka Mayor’s Christmas Party) got to enjoy such things as Ice Cream and pictures with Santa.

Carols by Candlelight was underway after the Fair and all the Christmas standards were sung no doubt getting everyone fine tuned for what will come in just over two weeks time.

The warm weather stayed throughout the Carols with the temperature reading 23.7 degrees at 9pm and the wind generally behaved itself with the highest gust being 30km/h at 6:20pm and the lowest was 9km/h at 9pm.

As readers can see in the pictures by Daniel Clark, A fireworks display ended the night and it was well received by those who saw the action although some locals did have concerns about the safety of nearby pets and animals including the Peacocks and other animals in the Gardens itself.

While some probably wish the Carols were on a week or even two weeks from today to be closer to Christmas itself, the amount of positive responses from residents on social media will make it  interesting to see if they pair the Christmas Fair and Carols by Candlelight again next year.

December 8 2017

It has been one week since the launch of ‘Return and Earn’ and so far there has been positive feedback about the program.

The program had a soggy start as the rain came down in the early hours of operation and most likely made people wait until late Saturday or early Sunday to try it out.

For those who don’t know, ‘Return and Earn’ is where you can go to the back of Central IGA, deposit select types cans and bottles into a machine and can either give the proceeds to charity, get vouchers to use or deposit the money to your PayPal account.

The machine is operational from 7am until 10pm each day and aside from Deniliquin, Finley has an over the counter collection point at IGA Finley whilst Leeton has a machine at Woolworths.

Users have commented on the relative ease of using the machine but have also made note that the bottles and cans have to be in excellent condition otherwise they won’t be accepted.

Users also have to take care in where they are parking as the area where the machine is located at is also a loading area and so trucks and other vehicles need to come and go freely with worrying about vehicles and pedestrians.

Others are hoping to program expands to places like Hay and the lack of information that the Leeton machine was out of action and one commented that they are unhappy that prices of drinks have risen to accommodate the program.

To further elaborate, several drink makers have come aboard the program and raised prices by 10 cents per bottle or can to offset the price that is given back to consumers.

Two million containers have been deposited across NSW since the launch, that is $200,000 that depositors have received.

If you need the app for your phone, please visit the app website and the website also shows you how to use the app and the machine.

It will be interesting to see if the program contains to be a success and entice Edward River Council to start kerbside recycling to ensure a wider amount of material can be recycled for later use.

December 4 2017

For those unaware, you can now listen to 2QN and 102.5 online.

Listening is easy, at the top of both pages is a play button with a description of what is playing and listeners can just press play and go from there.

When we tested both websites out, we had trouble staying connected with 102.5 and 2QN’s streams taking several attempts to get going and both stations cut out after a couple of minutes or less.

We found that you had to reload the page a couple of times to get it going at various stages.

The streamed seemed low quality with the music not coming threw as strong as it can be like listening to a well worn cassette tape

The connection troubles could be internet related but we will try again soon and we will report our findings but getting to listen to both stations is nice.

December 3 2017

Rain over Friday and Saturday has pushed the December rain total just 5.6mm away from the December 2008 record of 68.8mm.

28.2mm of rain fell on Friday and that was followed by 34.4mm on Saturday with most of Saturday’s rain falling in the early hours.

The Edward River has risen 9cm since last Wednesday, while the river is expected to rise some it will not reach minimum flood levels which is 4.60m.

There is still a 150.6mm difference in rain totals from last year, 2016 also had 28 more days of rain at this point of time and the area was dealing with flooding last year compared to none this year.

When not comparing this year to last year, the difference between the average rainfall until December and the current total is 36.4mm.