Birchip and the Silo Art Trail

Once Shannon and I left Swan Hill, it was a surprisingly short drive of an hour or so until we saw our first artwork on the side of a silo. This was in Sea Lake, which is just to the south of Lake Tyrrell. If you haven't been there, it is amazingly large and terribly pink. It also had this amazing area to look at the stars, which I can only imagine is great at night.

From there we went onto our first piece of silo art, which was of a girl on swing. There is silo art in various places in Victoria and, as you'd imagine, there are all sorts of subjects and styles. But this first one was just the sort of thing that I like: literal and vivid.

After that we headed south to a little town where the silo art was of a man and his cattle dog, which was just amazing. But it was a terribly small town and I don't think we saw so much as a petrol station or a general store. But we did see bit of sculpture made out of various bit of machinery and cars. So we followed the signs and met the people who made this sculptures and sold them. They had transformed the backyard of their house into a garden of these sculptures and it was really something to see.

Then we drove down to Burchip, which was quite a busy little place. As we did a few times in this roadtrip, we stopped at a bakery for lunch. It seems that every bakery in rural Victoria lays claim to make the best vanilla slice, and I am sure that one of them must be right. And, while the food was nice, it was hard to complete with the joy of finding this mural on the side of the post office.

This dog looks like Emmy Lou, our old dog, known with much affection as the Puppy Deluxe.

After Birchip, we travelled through various backroads to Horsham. There wasn't a highway to take us from A to B, so I decided to trust the talking map. While this didn't lead to any actual disasters, we certainly drove many a mile alone some pretty narrow road, some of which we shared with surprisingly large trucks. Once in Horsham, I did what any sensible person would do and had a nap.

09:31 pm, November 25, 2024