Silo Art Trail Project count could rise to 30

THE hugely popular Silo Art Trail in Victoria’s northwest could grow from six sites to up to 30 over the next two years.

THE hugely popular Silo Art Trail in Victoria’s northwest could grow from six sites to up to 30 over the next two years.

Plans are afoot to turn the region’s huge grain silos into an international art gallery and help the Wimmera-Mallee become a true tourist destination as part of the second stage of the project, which began with the first painted silo in Brim in 2016.

The current 200km trail takes in six silos, at Rupanyup, Sheep Hills, Brim, Rosebery, Lascelles and Patchewollock in Yarriambiack Shire. The new trail will include silos in nearby Buloke, West Wimmera and Hindmarsh shires, along the length of the Murray River. It will add to silo art projects dotted across the state, including a new addition to the line-up in Rochester.

“We want to add 12 silos next year and 12 the year after,” Buloke Shire economic development officer James Goldsmith says.

“We have never been a region that attracted huge tourist numbers but with 30 to 40 silos in the one spot, we think it could become a real international attraction, which would be great for the motels, hotels, bakeries and the like throughout the region.”

Brisbane street artist Guido Van Helten created his famous Farmer Quartet on the Brim silos, finished with limited resources two years ago, which captured the imagination of the town and inspired the Silo Art Trail project.

The six current silos on the trail celebrate the rich heritage of Victoria’s Wimmera Mallee Region and have transformed wheat silos into giant works of art.

With individual silo artwork now popping up at various locations across the state, Wimmera Mallee tourism chairwoman Helen Ballentine says it is important to have a cluster of work that is fairly centralised and that has a structure and a story to it.

“It’s OK for other towns to have their pretty silos but ours is unique because we are the biggest grain area in the state and this is the story of that industry and all the people in it,” she says.

“Silos are monuments to the history of farming … They are tributes to the generations of hard farming lives but also to the amazing people who built the silos, ran the silos and still today support our farmers. Obviously in time we can tell the big grain story of the region,” Helen says.

“Silos are therefore historically significant, like the pyramids of Egypt, or the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and so forth. Our silos are our pyramids.”

Helen hopes the Premier’s Pick My Project community program will provide more funds for the epic project.

So far Kaniva, Nullawil and Albacutya have all expressed interest in painting their silos.