A couple of years ago we took a three-day holiday just to see the painted silos in western Victoria and the fabulous painting on five 30m-high, silos in Coonalpyn, South Australia.
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It is called Looking Forward and depicts five primary school children who represent the town's future.
It was painted in 2017 by international artist Guido van Helten and was the first silo artwork in South Australia.
Guido also painted portraits of three local Country Fire Authority volunteers on a water tank in the middle of Winton Wetlands in 2017.
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Since then silo art, street art and water-tank art has proliferated throughout Australia.
Silo art is often in remote and unlikely places.
Benalla started its Wall to Wall street art program in 2015 then branched out to include silo art in 2018 when Australian artist Jimmy Dvate painted the endangered barking owl in Goorambat.
He added two large, and one smaller work the following year.
His Clydesdale painting is gorgeous, you can taste the dust they are creating.
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Devenish and St James had their silos painted, later a lady artist painted Tungamah's silos, too.
Tim Bowtell's painting in St James remembers Sir George Coles, founder of Coles supermarkets.
If you stand in front of the board telling the Coles family story and look to the right, you will see the tiny shop now in total disrepair, where the story began.
From little things, big things grow.
Frontline workers: Gemma the teacher
We made a day trip to see Benalla's silo art, but our absolute favourite artwork was not on a silo, but in the tiny Uniting Church in Goorambat.
Sophia was painted by renowned street artist Adnate.
She is beautiful and painted in the colours associated with her name, which means wisdom.
Some people think that Sophia is the "she" God.
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What amazed us is that uniting churches are not usually decorated in any way.
That someone thought of the idea and then had it approved to be painted inside a functioning church is fantastic.
Sophia is Benalla's point of difference. She is what interstate and international tourists (if we ever see them again) would want to see. Every Benalla resident should be her ambassador.
But, you have to find her. Signage to Goorambat is painted on a bit of corrogated iron on the corner of the Midland Hwy/Tocumwal Rd.
Frontline workers: Gemma the teacher
Signage does not improve all the way to Tungamah and is no better in Winton Wetlands, where the internal signs are all too small.
From Tungamah we headed to Dookie, arrriving from the north.
The countryside is lush and all dams are full at last.
Dookie's volcanic red soil has already stained even the youngest lamb.
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As soon as we arrived we felt that Dookie was alive with creative energy.
There is no street art and the silos are nude, they have done things differently.
They have made an artwork of a huge dead gumtree by decorating it with large red flowers.
We bought homemade pies and little cakes at the Emporium then, before crossing to the park to eat them, window-shopped in the Dookie Artist Tree.
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On Sunday all of us, including our granddaughter, went back to Dookie to explore inside the Artist Tree, which sells "artworks, plants and stuff".
We had lunch at the pub with its two wood fires, played in the park, then flipped a coin . . . climb Mount Major or walk along the rail trail, we climbed.
One day trip became two, with another planned.
When Tallis Winery reopens we will go for lunch. Their view is lovely, especially when the canola and rape crops are in flower.
Suzie Pearce
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