Five art silos to road trip to in New South Wales
If you want to combine an adventurous road trip around country and rural NSW with some art, then the art silos trail is the perfect weekend plan.Most of us know the towering grain silos that dot Australia’s landscape are being re-imagined as giant canvasses, painted with murals usually depicting rural life. But did you know the so-called silo art trail can be followed for more than 8500km, all the way from Northam in WA into Three Moon, Queensland? Okay, that’s a long haul but if you’re in NSW and want to see some silo art, here are five must-sees.
Dunedoo Winx Tribute
So, what’s the connection between the town of Dunedoo and famous racehorse Winx, winner of 33 consecutive races? The answer sits on top of the mare, depicted in a towering 19-metre high painting on a silo smack bang in the middle of town. Jockey Hugh Bowman was born just outside Dunedoo – and yes, it is pronounced “Dunny-doo” – so this silo art is a fitting tribute to the pair’s sporting genius. Artist Peter Mortimore had to overcome a fear of heights to paint it over two weeks, but the results have definitely geed-up the town’s tourism potential.
Weethalle Grain Silo
No subject could be more appropriate than the image painted on Weethalle’s 21-metre high, 31-metre wide silo grouping than a farmer, standing in a wheat field, inspecting the readiness of his crop. Weethalle is grain country and Melbourne artist Heesco captured that beautifully, but also the district’s other great agricultural endeavour of sheep farming and the resultant shearing scene on the same silo. Weethalle was the site of NSW’s first painted silos when completed in 2017 and, to many, are still the most beautiful.
Water Diviner, Barraba
When Sydney artist Finton McGee was looking for inspiration to paint Barraba’s trio of grain silos in 2019, NSW was suffering its worst drought in years. As a symbol of hope and faith he depicted a rural water diviner using two sticks to sniff out hidden groundwater and over 24 days painted him not once, but three times on the 40-metre high silos. Barraba is on the Manilla River north of Tamworth and like many of the silo art sites is relatively remote, so this excuse to visit is almost irresistible.
Sunburnt Country Silo, Gunnedah
If you’re looking for the “sweeping plains” of Dorothea Mackellar’s well-known “My Country” poem you could do a lot worse than checking out the countryside surrounding Gunnedah, just west of Tamworth. Okay, it’s not the Nullabor, but rising above the centre of town are silos painted with Dorothea herself, wagons bringing in the wheat and a verse or two from Mackellar’s poem. You can’t get much more Australian than that.
Flour Mill, Murrumburrah
Murrumburrah is well worth the stop if you’re heading out Cootamundra way, and not least for the painted silos at its old flour mill. The Murrumburrah Mills painting – another done by Heesco – is the most recent on the silo art trail being completed early in 2021 and shows an early farmer ploughing behind a horse, and workers with sacks of flour. The mill started operations in 1865 and so is a proud part of the local history.
Hero image: Weethalle Silo Art Project, Sheba_Also 43,000 photos, CC-BY-SA-2.0
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