Results!

The Bureau of Meteorology have an excellent data download page, where it's possible to download climate data. This is a Google Earth kmz file (about 1Mb) that shows where the stations are; below is an image of the stations in NW Victoria. Clicking on a cloud (in Google Earth) brings up the station name, BoM code, and years of rainfall data.

I've just drafted an article on recent rainfall patterns in the Wimmera and Mallee. If anyone's interested in exploring these patterns further, I've also uploaded them as Google Earth 'kmz' files (see note on kmz files below):

 The other thing I found while looking for data (besides the BOM Climate Data Download Page) is Bevan McBeth and Stephen Roxburgh's Gridded Historical Monthly Climate Data for the Australian Continent: January 1900-December 2004. I've also produced a kmz from it. It's a better interpolation than mine (because it also uses elevation, latitude and longitude as covariates) but only goes to 2004. The kmz has an image for each month between 1900 and 2004, over Victoria and South Australia, but it's slow (because it has to download each image): kmz

As always, I'd be interested in comments on the article and the data, and what the implications might be. 

KMZ Files

A 'kmz' file (in this case) describes how an image matches up with the Google Earth globe. You need to download Google Earth. When you open a 'kmz', Google Earth will put a white square where the image is going to sit on the globe. It may take a few minutes to put the image where the white square is, especially if the image is coming from the internet (eg. the 1900-2004 monthly rainfall kmz).  You can switch the 'kmz' on and off using checkboxes on the left hand side of the Google Earth screen, and zoom in to see more detail than is given in the articles.