I think its unclear. One would assume he landed at Bendigo because the weather didn't look good. At Bendigo the pilot checked the weather on NAIPS and the passenger rang someone at Nhill. One would assume that the combined information of passenger & pilot led them to decide to continue. They spent about 20 minutes on the ground at Bendigo at a time when there were still people around, so I'm willing to give the pilot the benefit and assume he made a good fist of trying to get a better handle on the weather ahead. I landed (as a passenger) at Tullamarine in a Virgin Blue aircraft at pretty much the accident time and I thought the Melbourne basin looked CAVOK or very close to it. This is a fair way from Horsham, but it does serve to question the assumption that there was universally poor weather.
I'm sure this will re-ignite the NVFR debate, but the accident occurred basically at last light and not some time after last light due to disorientation. So, I still think its probably a VMC to non-VMC thing.
Given that the pilot has landed at Bendigo (presumably) to seek better weather information, my question is does our system provide adequate information on which to base a decision to fly a hour's flight? In my experience, the TAF's for Horsham / Nhill are very poor - especially toward the end of its validity. There is a (phone only) AWIS, but without cloud data. In fact there are none with cloud data in that whole segment of Victoria. Would the outcome have been better with the old flightwatch? Would the outcome be different if flight following was easier to access? Would the outcome be different if he took the more direct route (largely following the highway) via Ballarat which would have required an airways clearance. But at this time of the afternoon it is unlikely that this would have been granted.
The pilot is likely to be blamed here for poor decision making. But given that he landed and sought additional weather information, I think it is appropriate to review whether our system was able to provide him with adequate information. The Bendigo landing is not consistent with a reckless or gung-ho pilot.