Keen to see how the turbines will look from your place?
You’ll find us at the Walcha Street Stall this Friday and Saturday (22-23 October), fill out a new petition, or just come along and learn more. All welcome.
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What this will look like from where you live
We have engaged the services of a professional Sketchup Modeller to create a model of the wind turbines in the Winterbourne project, and place them on the terrain generated by Google Earth.
While these will not look like an artists impression, it is an accurate way of determining how many turbines you will see, how much of each turbine, how close they are and which direction they are from you.
It is not as pretty as a painting or a mock up from a developer’s brochure, but it IS ACCURATE, and will be more revealing than a developer’s montage.
We are trying to make this simple and available to everyone to view at your leisure, however for the time being, the easiest way is to give us a call and we can drop out and demonstrate with a laptop – for your location.
UPDATE (May 2025): After further Requests for Information from National Parks and Wildlife, Winterbourne Wind have had to update their Turbine Visibility Mapping. This map now shows how many turbines are visible from any location in the Walcha LGA. How many are visible from your home?
This can be now explored on page 8 of this consultants report.
Familiarise yourself with the software, search for Walcha an have a look for your home.
Place a pin on your place. Add some markers for reference and note their location in the “Places” pane, top left.
Download the KMZ file (a layer that you can view on Google Earth) from the following location link to the file in Dropbox folder Google Earth Modelling,
Click on the file link, it will open Google Earth, and the locations of the turbines for the Winterbourne Wind Project will be showing as icons on the surface.
In the “My Places” pane, drag the file from “Temporary places” to “My Places” Click File / Save… / Save My Places. It will be there when you next open google earth)
Click on the file link, it will open Google Earth, and the locations of the turbines for the Winterbourne Wind Project will be showing as icons on the surface.
You can toggle any of the standard “layers” and “places”, any of the imported Winterbourne Project layers, and any of your own created layers, by clicking on these items in the left panes, “Layers” and “Places”. “Layers” cannot be modified, only toggled on and off. “Places” can be modified, imported, relocated, added to etc.
Now, to see the rendition of the towers from your location….
Step 2
Download and install Sketchup viewe (free to use) >
Follow instructions to download, and find it on your home screen to open.
Download the Sketchup terrain model link to the file in the dropbox folder folder Google Earth Modelling and save to a location on your computer, (same folder as above, with the KMZ file)
Now open Sketch up
Go to File / open, and navigate to the WWF TOPOGRAPHY.skp file. You will see a model of the terrain North West of Walcha, including the the Winterbourne Wind project area. You will also note, if you zoom in, the turbines in each of their locations.
Using the navigation buttons on the top left, you first use the” hand” icon, to
Pan the model with the left “click and hold”,
Roll the mouse button to zoom
Drag up and down to go to ground level, and
“Click and hold” the mouse wheel and drag up and down, to tilt the view.
You will need to use google Earth to assist you to find your location, as the model is not as high resolution (graphically) as Google Earth. Nor can you search, or use layers, or save reference points. Use Google Earth to do this, and then cross reference to find yourself on the model.
Once you are on your spot, at ground level, change to the rotation icon, (above the hand icon) in order to rotate the view.
To rotate, “click and hold” the left button, and move left and right.
For example, from ground level, at the main roundabout at Walcha, looking north
For Example ….
From ground level, in the main roundabout at Walcha (cnr Fitzroy and Derby), looking north. <br> Note that the render does not include buildings, trees etc. It only includes the terrain, and the turbine models.
2nd example, from the southern end of the Apsley falls walk around the rim, looking north. <br> These turbines will be within 2.5km of the Apsley falls lookout point.
