Road trippin' to Patche

For the past fortnight  Brisbane-based mural artist Fintan Magee has been painting a giant mural on the walls of the Patchewollock silo. Nick Hulland farmer of Patche is the subject of the social-realist styled Fintan Magee.

Fintan in action, Photo: Wimmera Mail Times

 The mural depicts a tree dying and new growth to represent the bush life cycle. Fintan said the silos project was about making art more accessible; "bringing art out of the galleries and making it part of people's everyday lives".

Nick, whose grandfather settled in the Patche district under the post-World War I Soldier Settlement Scheme, said that if the Patchewollock mural "promotes our little town in any way, that's good".

And already the mural is attracting inter-state visitors to the town (after they work out where it is actually situated), many more people are planning a 'road trip' to see this and the Brim silo.

The proposal for the next silo art piece is for Adnate to work on the surface of the Sheep Hills silos in November.

The big palette

Compliments to the Yarriambiack Shire who are chasing dollars for 'the world's biggest art gallery'.

On the back of the phenomenal success of the Brim Silo Art project  (see the previous 'High art' post) the Shire is proposing a 'Silo Art Trail' - a 200km trail of landscape size silo art from Rupanyup in the south to Patchewollock in the north.

Sheep Hills silos (which would have looked the part in 'The dressmaker' film)

Yarriambiack Mayor Cr Ray Kingston wants to commission renowned artists to paint giant murals on silos along the length of the municipality at Rup, Sheep Hills, Rosebery, Lascelles and Patche.

Guido, Adnate & Rone 'Wall to Wall' in Benalla

Discussions are taking place with the local communities, Graincorp, Juddy Roller (who helped bring Guido Van Helten to Brim), and government. They are targeting high profile street artists for the project, so it would be great to see, say an Adnate piece decorating a silo wall.

Silos at Rosebery, across the road from the Desert Gallery & Cafe

WDA's new director Ralph Kenyon said that the project would tie the long narrow municipality together (Yarriambiack is over 7,000 square kms, but over 160kms long and under 70kms at its widest).

Lascelles provides a variety of canvases

 As Dean Lawson stated it is a master stroke for increasing growth & development via tourism in Yarriambiack, as visitors will want to tick off each location as they bag each 'peak', in the biggest regional art project in Australia's history.

Adnate in the Geelong B Power Station

Would have liked to have seen the Nullan silos get a guernsey, they have a wonderful symmetry as they rise from the plain, particularly good at dawn.

Nullan siding silos, near Minyip

 

Motoring on the rails

This Post is in reply to Steve Henderson's Comment on Brimming with memories, concerning a photo of a railmotor at Brim. 
So here is the photograph from the book "Victorian railway railmotors : a photographic profile 1950's-1980's" edited by Neville W. Gee and John Sargent.

The railmotor 57 at the now demolished Brim station

 Possible identities in the photograph are - (man leaning on the post), woman with handbag, woman in check skirt, Station Master Don Newick (man in VR uniform), Ralph Crisp (man with case), man with cases.
The Diesel-Electric Rail Motors (D.E.R.M.) first entered service in 1928 and the last was withdrawn from service in 1991. They had a maximum speed of 100km per hour, and a maximum of 54 passengers.

Between 1928 and 1931 the Victorian Railways purchased 10 Petrol Electric Rail Motors produced by the Electro-Motive Corporation of the US. Known as the E.M.C. Model M-300, these units were supplied for assembly by VR at the Newport Railway Workshops and were converted to diesel-electric between 1951 and 1953. These units carried the numbers 55 to 64.
 

In the book, there were a couple of other railmotors in the region:

  

DERM 64 in Hopetoun, taken looking north , the station building & platform have since been removed. The Goods Shed on the left is still on site.

DERM 57 was modified to diesel in December 1952. Retired in March 1982. Sold for scrap in November 1982.

DERM 63 was restored to 1930s livery and is now on the Daylesford Spa Country Railway.  

DERM 64 is apparently being restored.

(Below) DERM 63 at the dock platform in Murtoa, with the now demolished Signal Box behind, looking south.

High art

With headlines “Tiny Wimmera town brimful of pride” and “Giant silo art dubbed tiny Wimmera town’s Mt Rushmore” the media and online response to the Brim Silo Art has been amazing.

The silo’s mural has its own Facebook Page

The finished mural against a Wimmera sky. Donna Wallace Facebook

Internationally renowned Brisbane-based artist Guido van Helten is using regional Victoria’s largest cherry-picker to breathe new life into Brim’s disused grain silos with a 30m by 30m artwork. For 3 weeks he has worked for up to 10 hours a day, including Christmas Day and New Year's Day, in frequent 40-degree heat and strong winds to create the work using spray paint and acrylic house paint.

Guido on site, by Rob Leeson

 “I work on photography so when I got here I arranged a small photography project, which sort of documented the people of the town,” Guido said, and he had wanted to paint an iconic Australian silo for years.

The rough, round surface of the silos and a scorching, wind-battered central Victorian summer meant the task had not been easy.  Van Helten took photos of locals and mapped the work on computer, but a challenge was to accommodate the silos' curves.

A blank canvas, by Paul Carracher

Funding from Regional Arts Victoria, the Yarriambiack Shire Council, Brim Active Community Group and a paint sponsorship by Taubmans and Loop Paints allowed work to get under way before Christmas.  The local caravan park and pub provided free accommodation and meals.

Guido in action with the spray gun he also used a paint brush, by Rob Leeson

Brim Active Community Group president Shane Wardle said the artwork was already making a difference to the local community.

“The Facebook has been unbelievable. It’s even gone overseas now. One lady said the next time she comes to Australia she’ll be coming to Brim to have a look at the silo. It’s just amazing.”

Any boost for Brim’s people and their businesses would be a bonus, “If the pub sells another beer and the shop sells an ice cream, we’re happy with that,” Shane said.

Guido on the boom dwarfed by the silo, Rob Leeson

Now 4 giant figures representing generations of the area’s people will loom over the Henty Highway in a sight sure to join Australia’s big things as a road-trip must.

The now vanished image, Paul Carracher

Visitors are driving for hours to see the  giant mural overlooking the tiny community of Brim. One visitor compared it to Mount Rushmore, the giant sculpture of four US presidents in South Dakota.
Originally the second character was a child's face, till Guido thought it didn't fit with his vision, so after all that work he changed it to what we see today. Fortunately the Mail Times captured the work in progress.

Brim Silo Art is now a masterpiece of outdoor art using the canvass of unused grain silos. But Brim is not alone with many small towns left with now unused silos, tall, blank, grave monuments to an once important part of a small towns economy.

The cement silos at Brim were built back in the 1938 and were never designed to last this long and are still in working order, but due to the larger carrying capacity of trucks, they were decommissioned approx 3 years ago, and now all grain now is either stored on farm or is sent to the Beulah or Warracknabeal bunker storages.

Grain silos are being shut down because of cost cutting rationalisation by grain purchasing companies. The cost is being shifted from the corporations to the family farmer who has to bear the cost for shifting grain the extra distance from the once local silos to a bigger centre. 
Guidio van Helten is a well-known & recognised muralist, check out some of Guido's other great work via his webpage,  some of them in much colder climates.

: Lynton Brown's drive-by video
: 7News video
: ABC Rural's article on the people on the silo
: Brim Silo Art Project

Peter, Sam, Win, Al & Guido. Mikala Hateley on Facebook

Sources: The Age, Herald-Sun, Mail-Times, Facebook

Brimming with memories

It's great when an item - a photo, a reunion, a chance comment, a blog post, a throw-away line - starts a conversation. The earlier 'Railways - Patchewollock line' post back in January has unearthed some great photos.

The Patchewollock line branched from Murtoa, efforts to extend the line were due in a large part to the lobbying of pastoralist Edward H. Lascelles. He started construction of the private line, but it was completed by Victorian Railways. The line was changed from broad to standard gauge at the same time as the main line to South Australia. The line beyond Hopetoun was closed in December 1986 and the tracks removed.

The photos concern the railway station at Brim. The photograph above was taken from on top of one of the Brim silos in the 1960s by Merwyn Wardle. He and his family lived up on the hill behind the station.

Brim today - the Goods shed in front of the silos

The row of grain silos

The line opened to Brim in January 1893 (the township wasn't surveyed until 1890). The station handled grain and stock and had a passenger service, now only the grain traffic remains. 
The Railways Department constructed a grain shed in 1894 for storing shareholders wheat (apparently the railways own the floor & the farmers the 'shed'). By storing the wheat farmers could take advantage of increased prices during the winter off-season. 
Over the years the shed stored wheat, barley, oats and super-phosphate.The Farmers Grain Shed was also used for community functions - weddings, dances, flower shows... 
Stockyards were built to allow farmers to send stock to the Newmarket sales and elsewhere. Stock loaded on a Sunday were dispatched on Monday morning via the train returning from Patchewollock, and would reach the Melbourne early Tuesday in time for the markets. With the advent of more livestock transportation by road, the stockyards were dismantled.
The concrete silos were constructed in 1938. 
The passenger rail service was replaced by a bus service, with the Vline bus stop next to the entrance to the rail yard.

The Pig Pen shed - when the Australian Wheat Board introduced wheat bulk-heads in 1946, they were known as "pig pens".
The platform & its buildings, the pig pen, farmers grain shed, fuel depot, and the gangers quarters have all been removed or dismantled from the rail yard.
The Gangers quarters with its extra 2 room extension was jacked up and shifted to Wardle's 'Klondyke' farm on the back of Keith Hunter's truck in the early 1970s.

The Gangman's quarters

The silos and the Goods shed are the only surviving historic buildings remaining at Brim.

The Goods shed with the platform mound behind

Railways - Patchewollock line

A Patche bound steam train at Warrack (from "C.R.S.V.")

The Patchewollock line branched from Murtoa, efforts to extend the line were due in a large part to the lobbying of pastoralist Edward H. Lascelles. He started construction of the private line, but it was completed by Victorian Railways. The line was changed from broad to standard gauge at the same time as the main line to South Australia. The line beyond Hopetoun was closed in December 1986 and the tracks removed.

Coromby's weighbridge scales still in situ

Coromby Grain has always been an important component of the Patche line, in fact all the rail-lines in the Wimmera. Though Coromby's silos are now disused, evidence of that grain cartage still remains, including its weighbridge manufactured by Hawke & Co of Kapunda in South Australia (Henry Binney Hawke established the H.B. Hawke iron foundry and engineering works in 1857, and created the first hydraulic car hoist, the broadcast seed sowing machine and the weighbridge. The company closed in 1983).

Minyip station and sheds (from "C.R.S.V.")

The first train steamed into Minyip in January 1886, but the station was not officially opened until May with a daily passenger service. Stock yards were erected in 1887, the goods platform extended in 1888, and a weighbridge and Diary Produce shed added in 1889. The tender for construction of the station building was let in 1890.When built in 1939, the silos were largest capacity in Victoria. A steel annex bin and oat shed were erected in the 1950s, and a 250,000 bushel bulkhead in 1969. In 1976 a road bus replaced the passenger rail-motor and by the mid 1980s the stock yards and goods shed were demolished. The classic boarded-up station and platform still remains.

The Minyip station building

Nullan

The symmetry of the Nullan silos

Originally known as Tarkedia, the name was changed to Sheep Hills in 1886, when the railway arrived and a township grew up around the station. The station was a brick building with a cool storage chamber.

The Sheep Hills siding with the main line on the right

The now abandoned Warracknabeal building

Warracknabeal the line from Murtoa reached Warracknabeal in May 1886. Now the disused red brick station building and passenger platform remain. The extension of the line northwards was orginally known as the Warracknabeal-Lake Corrong Railway Line.

Warracknabeal Station (from "C.R.S.V.")

Warrackside is still a major grain siding, a kilometer north of the Warracknabeal station, part of the facilities are a large silo and an old distillery grain storage. Below the Warrackside line branches from the main Patche line. Some of the silos are visible along with the large bunker sites in blue tarps.

Batchica Siding work to extend the line beyond Warracknabeal began in February 1892, at a time when the Mallee wilderness was being opened up to farming.

Lah A variety of silo styles sit on the plain surrounding Lah.

The line opened to Brim in January 1893 (the township wasn't surveyed until 1890). The station handled grain and stock and had a passenger service, now only the grain traffic remains. The grain shed constructed in 1894 was also used for community functions. The silos were constructed in 1938.

The Goods Shed at Brim

Brim Gangers quarters with an extra 2 room extension, shifted to Wardle's 'Klondyke' farm on the back of Keith Hunter's truck in the early 1970s

Galaquil station was located on the division between the Wimmera and Mallee, and it also served as the town Post Office (the postal boxes are visible below the Galaquil sign in the photo below) until the closure of passenger services in July 1976.

Galaquil in 1971 (from "V.R stations & stopping places")

Beulah The rail line reached Beulah in June 1892, and officially opened in March 1893. A second railway station building erected in 1910 was destroyed by fire in April 1928. A rail motor passenger service from Murtoa commenced in 1926, the last passenger train was in July 1976. The Beulah ticketing office is now used as a club meeting room.

A crowd of passengers await the train on the Beulah platform, 1986 (from "C.R.S.V.")

In contrast - the deserted Beulah station in 2009

Beulah's cement silos were built in 1939, and the 1 million bushel silo complex opened in 1963. Beulah GEB Siding while there is no longer a Beulah passenger service, the grain silos and bunkers are still operational.

Rosebery passenger services stopped in 1961, but the siding & silos remained. The silos are opposite the old church building which is now the Outback Cafe.

Goyura residents petitioned for the line to deviate to the township, and a siding was approved.

Hopetoun the first steam locomotive reached Hopetoun in December 1893, and the Beulah-Hopetoun section was officially opened on April 11 1894. The rail motor passenger services from Murtoa began in 1934 and ceased in July 1976. Hopetoun is again the terminus of the line. The passenger station building has been removed leaving only the silos and goods shed.

Hopetoun's goods shed from the platform mound

Burroin siding closed in 1953.
Dattuck siding closed in 1955. (below) J542 locomotive on the broad plains between Hopetoun and Dattuck with goods for Patchewollock, in December 1966

J542 near Dattuck (from "Patterns of steam")

Today, Yarto has more than the appearance of isolation, at the end of a 'no through road' backing onto the sandhills of the Big Desert and Wyperfeld National Park.

The 200 tonne silo at Yarto

Willa siding closed in 1953, today Willa is surrounded by encroaching mallee, and the faded sign is the only evidence of the 'Willa Railway Station'.

A forlorn looking Patche station

Patchewollock construction of the 27 mile line extension to Patche began in September 1923, and terminated 2 miles short of the town. It was officially opened in May 1925. The galvanised iron goods shed was erected in1928. A weekly goods train service ceased in September 1975. The 1925 weighbridge was computerised in 1985. The line closed in December 1986 and the rails were ripped up, but the small weatherboard station building and goods shed were left. The silos are still in operation.

J542 again, approaching a sand fence shortly after leaving Patchewollock in 1967 (from "Patterns of steam")

Further information and photographs at Shane McCarthy's "Patterns of steam" and Neville Gee's "VR stations and stopping places" and John Sargent's "Country railway stations Victoria" series