In order to bring people and more specifically tourists (and their wallets), to the Wimmera-Mallee region in western Victoria, the ‘Silo Art Trail’ was devised. As the name suggests, Silo Art is the common link. With each of the 6 towns being located within a traditional grain growing region, they all possessed grain silos. We have all seen these silos before and never really paid them much mind due to their utilitarian nature and typically drab and plain metal or concrete construction. In these six towns at least, the silos are drab no more!
A day or two before we were to leave Wedderburn and commence the drive back to Adelaide we came across an article in one of the regional tourist information brochures that described a driving route that linked 6 communities. As we had no particular planned path to get back home and the fact that it was more or less in the general direction we had to go, we decided to check it out!
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| Silo Art Route in Western Victoria. Click on the image to enlarge it and perhaps you will be able to read the text |
The images on each of the silos was completed by different teams of local and international artists with the people portrayed in the paintings being locals from each of the regions.
We traversed the route travelling from south to north, visiting the silos in the towns of Rupanyup, Sheep Hills, Brim, Rosebery, Lascelles and finally Patchewollock.
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| Metal silo in Rupanyup |
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| Painted concrete silos at Sheep Hills |
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| The silos at Brim were the first of the six to be painted |
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| Silo Art at Rosebery |
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| Husband & Wife on either side of the silos in the town of Lascelles |
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| Farmer on the silo at Patchewollock |
The route links 6 towns across about 200km of the Victorian countryside and is stated to be Australia’s largest outdoor gallery! Not being a very artistic type, I don’t have too much to say about the paintings themselves but following the Silo Art Trail made for an interesting distraction from what could have been an otherwise pretty boring transit.
Our congratulations to the local council(s) for having the vision to do something a little different in order to take drivers off of the main highway routes and bring new eyes to their region. We stopped for something to eat, bought some fuel and have now passed on the message to others to go and visit this area that many would normally bypass.
WTF? - Where are The Farrows? will be back after Easter 2018 when we hit the road for parts unknown for an open-ended duration.
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