Silo Art Trail

The trail began in 2016 when a mural was painted on the disused silos at Brim showing four local farmers, an unheralded project that drew so many visitors to a town of a hundred people that other communities followed. The Victorian trail now links six or more sites across the Wimmera and Mallee, each silo thirty metres or more high and painted by a different artist with portraits of local people: farmers, sportswomen, Aboriginal elders and children of the district. The idea spread across Australia, and hundreds of painted silos and water towers now exist nationally. Driving the Victorian route takes a full day through flat wheat country with long distances between towns.

What you actually see

• The painted silos - thirty-metre portraits of local people on working infrastructure.
• The Brim originals - the 2016 mural that started the trail.
• The Wimmera towns - small farming communities the works are drawn from.
• The wheat country - flat cropping plains between the sites.

When to go

March to November for comfortable driving; the crops are green in winter and spring and gold before the summer harvest. Summer is hot with little shade. Light matters, and each silo faces a different direction, so timing varies by site.

Honest expectations

Distances between silos are long, up to an hour of driving for a five-minute stop. The towns have very limited food and fuel, and several have no services at all. Strong midday sun flattens the paintings, and some sites face awkwardly for photographs.

Nearby

The Grampians lie south; Lake Tyrrell and Sea Lake are northeast.