IT WAS the sort of welcome usually reserved for royalty.

Early yesterday, excited Dimboola residents rushed around town for the best vantage points, undeterred by the dark and the chill. But this was not the Queen coming to town, this was something far more important: the return of the Wimmera River.

Members of the Dimboola Rowing Club Rod Lehmann, Adrian Werner, Jarrod Bolwell and Keith Moller beside the Wimmera River yesterday. Inset: the riverbed last Friday. Credit:Wayne Taylor and Kate Healy/Wimmera Mail Times

Five years since it last flowed into this part of western Victoria, the head of the Wimmera has finally reached Dimboola, home of the district's annual rowing regatta for 121 years.

Strong rains have combined with strategic releases of environmental water to revive some parts of the river, which still rates as one of Victoria's driest and sickest.