This blog provides information, stories, links and events relating to and promoting the history of the Wimmera district.
Any additional information, via Comments, is welcomed.



Monday, 12 November 2018

The battle is over - live

The Horsham City Pipe Band and part of their rendition of the "Battle's o'ver", performed at the cenotaph beside the Wimmera River, a distinct Australian setting to a Scottish air.
Performed as part of the international simultaneous tribute for the Centenary of the Armistice of World War One.

Thursday, 8 November 2018

The battle is over

Throughout the United Kingdom, the sound of over 2,000 bagpipes will fill the air before dawn has broken on 11th November 2018. In cities and towns throughout the land, individual pipers will play "Battle’s O’er” - a traditional air played by pipers after a battle. Heralding the start of the day’s commemorations, they will play the haunting tune outside churches and cathedrals, in market squares and muddy fields, on hilltops and high streets, in valleys and village greens throughout the country, and at scores of locations overseas, including Australia.


A lone piper will play "Battle’s O’er" alongside the Grave of the Unknown Warrior, Westminster Abbey, London, with others undertaking a similar performance at 6am local times at individual locations all over the world, starting in New Zealand. In Australia that is at 5pm on the 11th. They will mark the exact time the Armistice was signed.
Hundreds of pipers - massed bands and solo pipers - across Australia are preparing for their role in the international commemoration. Special massed bands will assemble at the Shrine of Remembrance Melbourne, Adelaide War Memorial, King’s Park Perth and on Macquarie Wharf Hobart while bands and solo pipers take their place at memorials in suburbs and rural and regional communities. In Horsham a solo piper will play at the cenotaph at 5pm.


The “Battle’s O’er” was written at the end of World War One, and adopted as a tribute to more than 2000 British and Commonwealth pipers who lost their lives in battle during the war.

A poignant tribute to the soldiers killed and wounded in World War One by more than 1000 pipers and drummers from Australian pipe bands on the Centenary of the Armistice.

Tuesday, 6 November 2018

Big Lizzie

The State Library of Victoria is always adding to their collection, and have just highlighted the release of the images of amateur photographer Wilf Henty, who worked for the Victorian Railways and took photographs documenting life from 1901 through to 1940.
Wilf Henty, a collateral descendant of the Henty family who took up residence in the Portland district of Victoria in 1829. Wilf worked for the Victorian Railways, and his photographic work documents the life and interests ranging from Manangatang in the Mallee to the tall forests of East Gippsland around Bruthen.

The two images here, are of Big Lizzie, and would have been taken between 1920 and 1924 when she was in the Mallee.
Big Lizzie with a man standing between the engine and trailer
 Big Lizzie was built by Frank Bottrill, in Richmond, in 1915, with a 60hp Blackstone water-cooled crude oil engine and fitted with Bottrill's Dreadnought wheel, patented in 1906. Lizzie worked in the Mallee clearing fruit blocks, and traveled down through the Wimmera to Glendinning near Balmoral in 1924.
 
Big Lizzie's trailer with 2 stationary engines