North Eastern Victorian Silos

After leaving Port Fairy, we headed north east towards Ballarat. Our next evening was spent camped at the Newstead racecourse and recreation ground, 17 km south-west of Castlemaine. It's also listed in WikiCamps, and your $10 fee per night gets you showers, toilets, fresh water, and a dump point.

Our next day of travel continued through Bendigo and towards the Strathbogie Ranges. We were there to spend the evening with friends on their property at Strathbogie. A lovely meal, including many bottles of red wine, saw us eventually head to bed quite late.
 
From here, we continued through Euroa before joining the Hume Freeway to Benalla and our campsite for the next two nights.
 
We are spending two days camped at Broken Creek bush camp, 16 km north-west of Benalla. Fees are just $7.50 per person, which includes showers, toilets, freshwater, and a dump point. This site is listed in Wiki Camps.

Four towns in northeastern Victoria have now painted their silos to form their own silo art trail.

Tungamah, Devenish, St James and Goorambat are all less than 50 kilometres apart.

Our campsite is near these four towns, so a day trip was the order of the day in photographing these silos.

We were surprised that all these silos were behind fences with no way of getting up close and personal, unlike the silos in the Wimmera.

We started the trail in Tungamah as it was the furthest town from where we were staying. 

Then it was south towards St James, where one of the silos was still in the process of being painted.

Our favourite silos were in Devenish, showing two servicewomen a century apart.

Apart from the silos in Goorambat, the local Uniting Church features a mural on its interior wall painted by street artist Adnate, who also painted the beautiful silos at Sheep Hills.

We enjoyed a lovely lunch in Benalla and took photos of some local street art.

 Before leaving Victoria, there was just one more silo to photograph. This was in the town of Rochester, just south of Echuca.

Towards the Grampians National Park

While photographing the Rupanyup silo, a man also taking photos mentioned an enjoyable side trip to the small rural town of Murtoa.

 

It involved a 15 km detour from our planned route, but we are happy that we made it.

 

The Murtoa 'Stick Shed' is a national heritage-listed icon. We arrived just after 10 am and joined a tour with over a dozen other visitors.

 

The 'Stick Shed' was built as a grain store in 1941, designed to address grain storage needs during the World War II wheat glut when exports were restricted.

 

The shed is made from 560 unmilled poles or 'sticks' (56 rows of 10) supporting the corrugated iron roof, with a concrete floor.

The shed measures 270 metres long, 60 metres wide, and 20 metres high.

 

From here, we took a minor road towards Stawell before heading south-west towards Pomonal. We spent the next two evenings camping at the Old Man Emu, 7 km from Halls Gap.

On our first day, we drove to Mackenzie Falls in the Grampians National Park and then climbed down to the base of the falls to take some photos. My phone app measured the climb back to the car park as the equivalent of climbing 23 floors.  

From here, we headed to Reed Lookout and the Balconies.

It was merely a short drive to Boroka Lookout, offering views down the valley towards Halls Gap and Lake Bellfield in the distance.

A well-earned lunch at one of the local cafés after our morning's exercise...

The following morning started early as we drove to the car park before beginning the Pinnacles walk. The distance is 5.5 km return, with an elevation change of 280 metres, and the track is graded medium to hard. It took us a solid hour to reach the summit, including stops for rest and photos.

Although it took us forty minutes to return to the car park, we considered the trip down to be harder on our legs. The phone app measured the climb to the Pinnacles as equivalent to climbing 70 floors, and it certainly felt like that to us. 

Tracking Australian Silo Art - Victoria

Last September, we spent the evening camping at Thallon in Queensland to photograph the town's beautifully painted silos.

In 2015, the first silo ever painted in Australia was in the small town of Brim, located in the Wimmera-Mallee region of western Victoria.
 
Building on the success of this project, five other silos in the same region have since been painted, creating the first silo art trail that covers 200 kilometres and connects the neighbouring towns of Lascelles, Patchewollock, Brim, and Rupanyup. Additionally, two silos are situated at Rosebery and Sheep Hills.
 
Plans are now underway for further art trails, which will transform these large, dull silos into impressive works of art.
 
Many smaller towns have now experienced the economic benefits of having silos painted. Instead of merely passing through, visitors now spend time viewing them, which boosts local sales of accommodation, food, and fuel.
 
GrainCorp, which owns most of the silos, has made more available for painting across regional Australia. Very few of these silos now store grain; instead, the grain is stored on the ground, covered with large blue tarpaulins.
 
Before starting the silo art trail, we headed south from Cobar to camp just outside Balranald. We spent the night in Yanga National Park, beside the Murrumbidgee River. 

From here, we crossed into Victoria at Tooleybuc, then passed through Ouyen and took a minor road to Patchewollock. It's the most northern painted silo. From this point, we will continue heading south over the next two days, photographing each silo.

 

A local sheep and wheat farmer, Noodle Hulland, from the district, is depicted on this silo. Painted by Fintan Magee a Brisbane based street artist this silo was completed in October 2016.

With the next silo in Lascelles, just 59 km away, we decided to head there and spend the evening. When we arrived, the local RV stop wasn't very welcoming since it was situated on the highway, so we took our photos and moved on. Painted by Melbourne street artist Rone, these silos feature the faces of local couple Geoff and Merrilyn Horman. They were painted in June 2017.

A potential campsite on Wiki Camps appeared inviting. It was situated on the banks of Lake Lascelles at Hopetoun. It's a gold coin donation to stay here and is quite popular.

Knowing that the silos at Rosebery and Brim faced west, we left just before lunch so we wouldn't be looking into the sun while taking our photos.
 
The Rosebery silo was painted by artist Kaff-eine. She assisted Rone, who painted the Lascelles silo. This silo was completed in October 2017.

The Brim silos were the first to be completed in 2015 by Guido van Helten. This inspired other artists to paint the remaining five silos that make up this trail.

We were really impressed with the silos at Sheep Hills. Painted by Adnate, a street artist renowned for his work with Aboriginal communities. The detail and colour were simply incredible, especially since we took the photos just after sunrise during the golden hour. The silos here are located away from the main highway, with only a few houses nearby and an old pub that has since shut its doors. This mural was finished in December 2016.

We finished the Silo Trail in Rupanyup. The silo was painted by Russian artist Julia Volchkova and completed in April 2017. She primarily specialises in portraits.

North-West New South Wales

At Armidale, we joined the New England Highway as we headed south towards Tamworth.

 

Leaving Tamworth, we joined the Oxley Highway as we steered west. Our campsite tonight is just off the highway, 12 km east of Gunnedah. It's known as the Redbank camping area and is beside the Namoi River. It's quite a large area with flushing toilets. 

We backed in as far as we could to try and lessen the amount of truck noise during the evening, but Ros, unlike me, is a light sleeper, so she was awake on and off during the night. Once we had both had several hot coffees and breakfast out of the way, we left just after 08:30. Passing through Gunnedah just ten minutes later, we were now on our way to Coonabarabran. There are currently severe water restrictions here, with showers limited to two minutes and no watering of gardens, so you can imagine how everything looks.

 

We wanted to photograph the water tower in the small town of Gulargambone, with the most direct route taking us out through Warrumbungle National Park. The load limit on the bridge just past the national park boundary is much lighter than our rig, so we took a detour via Gilgandra to get our photo.

We prefer to take minor roads rather than highways, so we travelled cross-country for the next 86 km until we reached Warren.  Here, we joined the Mitchell Highway at Nevertire before reaching Nyngan.
 
It was very sad to see the impact of the drought on the countryside we have been passing through. The irrigation channels around Warren were arid, and where crops usually grew in the fields, there is now nothing. The strong winds we have been experiencing over the past two days are blowing away what little topsoil remains. 
 
It was still quite early, so we headed north towards Bourke. We found a spot to camp 44 km north, in the small town of Girilambone. It's listed in Wikicamps, and a gold coin donation is requested for stopping at the local CWA park. They have one flushing toilet and shower.

Even though we didn't use these facilities, we were more than happy to leave $5.00 at the pub to help with the maintenance. Over a few beers, the publican told us that the town was nearly out of water. Unfortunately, the town's bore water contains far too much salinity, and the council will now arrange to install tanks at each house and have water trucked in. Of course, there will be a daily usage limit.
 
The camping area, as you can imagine, after many years of drought, has the occasional patch of dead grass. The whole area was covered in prickles, so thongs just weren't the go.

In the morning, we shared the area with some kangaroos. I'm not sure how they are surviving.

We encountered a B Double on a minor road, and I was forced to move over and hit a large hole on the side of the road. Our chine bar on the near side of our van has cracked.

We had planned to continue to Bourke and complete the upper part of the Darling River Run as far as Wilcannia. However, after seeing the impact of the drought and needing to have our chin bar welded, we turned back to Nyngan and continued west towards Cobar. We are now sheltering in the caravan park with the outside temperature currently at 40 degrees and still rising. Our van's air conditioning is now down to 28 degrees and dropping.