Many years ago, we drove across the central plains of Canada, following the railway in an almost straight line from the rim of Shoal Lake to the Rocky Mountains. For almost two thousand kilometres, through Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, much of the landscape is as flat as a pancake, apart from the occasional grain silo standing like a beacon beside the railway line.
In country Australia, similar silos are being used to promote rural towns by inviting local and international artists to paint them. Giant murals of native birds, our unique Australian mammals, farm animals and local heroes, these vast and vivid displays are attracting tourists to many out-of-the way, off-the-beaten track, middle-of-nowhere, beyond-the-black-stump kind of towns.
While the One & Only was walking the Heysen Trail, we came across a beauty in Wirrabara. Painted by Sam Bates – aka SMUG – this contemporary, Australian-born street artist, now based in Scotland, came home to create some amazingly realistic murals with cans of spray paint. This one, in the mid-north, just west of Peterborough, features Tumby Bay farmer, Dion LeBrun, a pair of Red-capped robins and eucalypts – what else? – in the background.
There are currently more than sixty painted silos across New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland, and they are growing in popularity.
The One & Only took our youngest on a road trip a couple of years ago to find silos in north-western Victoria, which started at Patchewollock and included those at Sheep Hills. Here Victorian artist and ‘street culture kid’ Matt Adnate has told the story of Indigenous Australians on six enormous silos in loud, strong colours that stand out like sore thumbs from the dusty paddocks surrounding them. The faces of two Elders, one man, one woman, and symbols of the ancestral past, look in towards their youth and their future, Curtly and Savannah. After a stint in Spain, Adnate went on to paint huge murals in inner city Melbourne suburbs. His reputation grew and he has often been invited to countries where he became fascinated by other First Nation cultures.
Last week, we were meandering along a back road towards Melbourne and found a short trail in north-eastern Victoria: Tungamah, St James, Devenish and Goorambat. Artists, both local and international, are getting creative on these vast canvases. No artist myself, I’m guessing that it can’t be easy to get the perspective right on a curved surface, not to mention painting on such a huge scale. Cherry pickers can help, but it is still an enormous undertaking.
The first one we came to was at Tungamah, on the banks of Boosey Creek. Apparently, these silo paintings, commissioned in 2018, were the first to be completed in north-eastern Victoria. And having set such a fine an example, three more towns along the same railway line heading south soon followed suit. These first three at Tungamah, depicting native birds, were painted by Western Australia street artist Sobrane Simcock, our first female silo artist. On the two taller concrete silos, there are dancing Brolgas, almost 30m high. The shorter silo has been decorated with a collection of our favourite birds: a Kookaburra, a Galah, a kingfisher, a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, blue wrens and a white Ibis hiding in the long grass.
In St James, Tim Bowtell has painted murals to the memory of GJ Coles of the supermarket chain, who was born here in 1885. He has also painted images of the huge cart horses who pulled the wagons carrying bags of wheat to the railway sidings from the 1880s. Bowtell, a street artist from the area, has painted murals on silos and water-tanks, shipping containers and old RSL buildings.
At Devenish, the silos have been painted to memorialise the men and women from the area who enlisted during and since World War One. On the two concrete silos there is a modern female army medic beside a WWI nurse, both standing knee-deep in poppies. These were officially unveiled on Anzac Day in 2018, a tribute to the 100-year centenary of the end of the First World War. On the shorter silo, unveiled a year later on Anzac Day 2019, there is a tribute to the Australian Light Horse: a WWI cavalry soldier stands beside his horse.
The mural artist is Cam Scale, who specializes in these large scale figures, which he paints using aerosol, oil and acrylic.
Our final stop was Goorambat. Here, in 2018, Jimmy Dvate began by painting a barking Owl on the tall concrete silo in 2018. His model, Milli, lives at the Healesville Sanctuary in Badger Creek, Victoria. Now an endangered species, locals hope Milli’s huge presence on the silo will help to save these beautiful birds from extinction. The two shorter silos were painted in honour of the local farming community. Three local Clydesdales and multiple award winners – Clem, Sam and Banjo – trot three abreast on one silo. On the other is a scene of an old farmhouse in a paddock, framed by a towering gum tree in the foreground.
Dvate has created many larger-than-life murals of flora and fauna on grain silos, water tanks and large walls, very often working with conservation groups to specifically target endangered species. Formally trained in graphic design and visual arts at Monash University, Dvate has become renowned for his Melbourne street art and graffiti.
Wouldn’t such art have enlivened our drive across Canada? Twenty five years later, and a team of artists from Montreal began turning huge silos in eastern Ontario into similar works of art. Called ‘Popsilos’ the craze began to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Canada’s Confederation. Maybe it’s time to return and see if anyone has picked up the idea farther west…