by Keith Anderson
Another highly successful Thorpdale Potato Festival the weekend before last camouflaged a dry reality for the district's potato growers.

Throughout the Thorpdale, Childers and Mirboo North areas - among Australia's usually most productive potato regions - growers are doing it tough.
All growers depend on rain during the year to fill their dams to provide the major ingredient - water - to produce their crops during the growing seasons stretching from spring through to autumn.
And the 26mm of rain recorded in Thorpdale on Sunday was only the start of what growers need to get through autumn.
One grower, David Blackshaw, said the past five months had been the driest he could remember in the 40 years he had been involved in the industry.
He described himself as one of the smaller growers with 75 acres, selling into fresh potato markets, but said his dams had dried up last month. He also runs some livestock which he is having to hand feed, unusual in the area at this time of year.
The Westbury family grows potatoes on some 1100 acres across several properties.
Matt Westbury said yields were well down although he had not yet added up the figures, but in a normal season would produce about 7500 tonnes most of which was sold to processors to make chips and other packaged potato products.
Our dams are almost empty, he said, as he looked with hope towards some reasonable rainfall to boost their autumn plantings.
Another long term grower Charlie Carpinteri described the season as "terrible."
All of the 25 to 30 growers in the area rely on dam water for their crops and the "late crops" were really struggling.
Some have been unable to plant a crop for an autumn harvest because they don't have water.
Mr Blackshaw said the extended dry period also was creating another problem for growers, potato grub that took advantage of the dry and crumbling soil.
Mr Westbury said the only green to be seen on the ground throughout the area was the late potato plantings, but they needed some rain.
The rest of the countryside is brown with dead grass and bare soil, he said.