Tag:abandoned
Urban explorers, often called urbex, range across all demographics from all walks of life. From young to old, male or female, Urbex is attracted by the lure of decay.
A constant search
I always have one eye peeled for abandoned, dilapidated, decrepit structures when travelling to family events, holidays, or other appointments. From schools, orphanages, asylums, hospitals, factories and railway stations to tram yards, amusement parks or old houses, If I find one, I mark it down for future investigation.
Risks and Legalities
Can it be dangerous? Most certainly. However, is it illegal to enter a property? That depends. If it’s completely abandoned, if there are no Keep Out signs, if it’s not fenced off or marked as private property, if you aren’t armed with bolt cutters or don’t need to break in to enter, you will prob get a polite move along if approached. However, entering an active, working building is an entirely different kettle of fish and strongly discouraged. The term ‘infiltration’ is applied to these ventures and carries the genuine risk of civil prosecution.
“If it’s a long-abandoned house, and they’re able to enter without doing any damage, there’s no sign forbidding people from entering the property, and they have no intention of committing any crime while on the premises — they’re simply photographing or noting what they see — it may be that no offence is committed.”
ABC News
Abandoned Beauty
Completely abandoned buildings are the most common lure to an urbex. Sadly, it doesn’t take long for them to become graffiti or vandalism targets once abandoned. By far, the most significant majority of abandoned structures fall into this category. Some, those with greater security, fare a little better. Finding an abandoned but undamaged building is akin to finding the holy grail. Abandoned sites are popular with photographers, historians, and ghost hunters as there is a sad but infinite beauty in the decay. As you walk the empty spaces, you can feel the history—the hopes, fears and pain of those who lived or worked there before. The silent walls that once enveloped the sounds of children, families, machinery humming or nurses tending sick have stories to tell. If only those walls could talk.
Storm Drains
Another common form of urban exploration is storm drains. Entry into these is referred to as “draining”. Groups, such as Cave Clan in Australia have sprung up dedicated to this. However, exploring storm drains carries vastly different risks than above-ground structures as they can be subject to flash flooding and toxic air. In addition, there is a specific set of rules around draining – such as “when it rains, no drains”! This is because of the dangers associated with becoming trapped or drowned during periods of rain when the sewers flood.
Safety First
Above-ground abandoned buildings are often unstable. Entry always carries risk. There could be asbestos, dodgy flooring or dangerous roofs. Live wires are a less common risk, but stray voltage is still possible. There is always broken glass, often holes in walls and floors. Sometimes rats or hostile squatters. Motion detectors or guard dogs guard some locations. The rule to live by is never going alone. Be alert and cautious where you step.
Locations and Secrecy
A common creed among urban explorers is never to disclose a location. This is partly to protect the site, and partly if it becomes viral more security will be employed. Images of abandoned places that are common knowledge or abandoned locations that have become tourist attractions will usually have a location. But a new site, one just found or in prime condition, will rarely have a location listed.
Leave No Footprints
While urban exploration doesn’t have rules as such, common-sense guidelines to follow are:
- Never break into a site. Forcible entry could land you in serious trouble. There is usually a broken window, a missing door, sometimes even an entire wall down that allows access without you causing further damage.
- Do not vandalise. Urban exploration is to explore and document. Not spray paint, break windows, smash doors and make it worse for the next explorer.
- Don’t steal or take souvenirs. Again – serious criminal trouble.
- Don’t share information about the location. So many buildings are now gone as arsonists found the sites. Loftus Tramsheds, Sydney, St. Johns Boys Home, Goulburn are victims of this. Sharing a location opens it up to vandals, junkies, thieves and arsonists. Only share with fellow Urbex and close friends you can trust to keep the site private.
- Never explore alone. You need to have at least one other person with you. Then, if one of you gets seriously hurt, they can go for help.
- Accept some sites are impossible to enter. For example, I would have loved to explore Box Hill Brickworks. But, unfortunately, it’s been pulled down now, so that chance has gone. But because physical safety was off the charts, it also had high security.
- More common sense, but if you are spotted, don’t run. You will, in all likelihood, only get asked to leave if you are only exploring or taking images. But running in an abandoned building is never a good idea. Safety above all
Document and Photograph!
Once abandoned, there is only a narrow window to photograph before the vandalism destroys the building. As the buildings deteriorate further, they either get demolished or security increases. So take lots of photos and share them on social media – without the location. Let others see places they won’t get to. If you are unlucky enough to be caught, taking photos also helps you avoid prosecution – you can show you were only taking images and not causing damage.
Detroit
For the lure of decay, Detroit is king. The city of Detroit has around ten abandoned neighbourhoods. I drool over images from Detroit as it has around 70,000 abandoned buildings plus 31,000 abandoned homes. It’s an urbex paradise. The city of Detroit actually declared bankruptcy with an $18 billion debt in the fallout of the global financial crisis. An excellent documentary on Detroit’s buildings can be seen below.
Seven km south of Rushworth and ten km south-west of the Waranga Basin reservoir lies the abandoned gold mining town of Whroo. The name is pronounced ‘roo’ and comes from an Aboriginal word meaning lips. The town is completely gone with little evidence of its existence, save for Whroo cemetery. The final resting place of 400 of the town inhabitants. Whroo is abandoned but not forgotten as the Whroo Cemetery trust works to restore the graves.
Gold!
In October 1854, the year after Rushworth, two sailors, John Thomas Lewis and James Meek Nickinson discovered gold at Whroo on Balaclava Hill. Balaclava Hill was a rich field and was later mined by open cut. The call of gold brought thousands of miners to Whroo; however, the population had shrunk to around 450 by 1858.
By 1865 Whroo had a flourishing gold mining industry. Serviced by a mechanics’ institute, library, two churches, three hotels, a cordial factory and three ore crushing mills. By 1933, at the last census, the population had dwindled to 52, and by 1955 it was a ghost town. Walking there today it is a silent, empty place of dry, dusty earth and ironbark forest.
Whroo Cemetery
The Whroo cemetery epitomises the difficulties of living in a harsh, unforgiving environment before modern medical care. Regardless of status, health, age or nationality, a simple illness or accident led to death. Chinese miners account for 15% of 400 graves. The Chinese were a significant part of the community as miners, puddling machine operators and market gardeners. Of the 400 graves, only around 200 names have been identified by the Whroo cemetery trust due to the deterioration of the grave markers.
Many of the graves are of children. These were either stillborn or died when Diptheria, Typhoid or dysentery swept through the town. Tuberculosis was also a common cause of death at the time. Among the graves is six children from one family. The eldest of which was a girl who died at just two years old. Their mother is also buried with them, who passed in her early 40s. Other graves as those of miners who died of illness or mining accidents
The cemetery trust is working on naming all the graves, and to that end, it has unveiled a new plaque with the names of all those interned there.
Crystal Ball photography has become extremely popular, but how do you do it, or where to start? Due to the shape of the ball, it’s refractive—meaning anything viewed through it is reversed—and it gives you a fish-eye effect without a fish-eye lens.
Crystal balls come in several sizes from 40mm to 110mm and are readily and cheaply available on eBay (though I have seen a 200mm!) While they are referred to as crystal balls, most are glass. The ball in these images is a glass 80mm. While the bigger sizes are more straightforward to photograph and fill more of the scene, their weight is considerable. I have a 40mm on the way… it will be much lighter, but the trade-off is what I can shoot. I’ve also dropped my 100mm or had it roll off a surface a couple of times, so it now has a couple of tiny dings in it, so I also have a 110mm on the way.
Photographing the Ball
To have your crystal ball stand out from the background, you need a wide aperture – F4 or lower. Stand back from it and zoom in to get the soft, blurred-out background. The image above was shot at F4, 105mm, and about 4 feet away. Duck down so you are looking straight onto it or lower. Don’t shoot from above, as you will only get what it’s sitting on. Instead, focus on the main point of interest in the ball and shoot your image. Out of direct sunlight is best to avoid reflection (see the top right where the sun hit it on the ball above).
Positioning the Ball
To place the ball, you can either put it on a pole, a flat surface, in a shot glass, or water. (I’m going to try a golf tee next!). Location-wise, you need something interesting behind it. Place the ball and move your feet until you have a pleasing composition. It all depends on the angle. Keep a lint-free cloth handy to clean it between shots, or wear cotton gloves to keep the fingerprints off. Then shoot and have fun.
Rightside Up or Upside Down?
Because of the refractive aspect, your images are always upside down when shot… but you can flip them right side up using your editing program. For example, to get the shot of the wetlands below, we wedged the ball into the fork of a tree. Then, I flipped the image in Photoshop so it was right side up.
Floating?
I wanted to get a shot that looked like the ball was floating/hovering in the air, so I placed it on a post and then removed the post in Photoshop. To do this, you can either go around the pole with the polygon lasso or use the elliptical marquee tool. It’s a bit fiddly using the elliptical tool, but I found it worked better as it was round like the ball. The polygon tool, however, is great for objects with irregular edges.
The first step is to drag the elliptical tool over your ball to fit. This may take a couple of goes till you get the size right. The marching ants around the ball mean that it only affects the ball, whatever you do.
However, we need to invert the selection so the area outside the ball is selected and the ball is protected. The keyboard shortcut on a PC is ‘Ctrl + Shift + I’ or on a Mac, it’s Cmd + Shift + I
Now, the marching ants are around the edge of the image and the ball. The ‘active’ area now includes everything except the ball, so you can safely clone out the post using your clone tool.
Now, all you need to do is ‘Ctrl + D’ on a PC or Cmd + D on a Mac to deselect the selection, close the marching ants, and make final adjustments or crop to your liking.
A word of warning
These balls can be dangerous in the sun! They concentrate the sun’s rays into an intense, direct beam of heat and light… I had seen a tripod begin smoking after just a few minutes when a ball was placed on one… and when I drove around all day with my 80mm crystal ball sitting in the console between the front seats, it melted the plastic underneath! So always keep your ball in a cloth bag when not in use, never leave it in the sun unattended, and if you are shooting it in dry grass… work quickly!
After August’s first highly successful and enjoyable light painting evening at Bradmill. Another was scheduled for October. In Yarraville, the old Bradmill Factory has been sold to a Chinese developer for $160m. It’s expected to be pulled down and redeveloped into a mini-city, but it’s a photographers mecca until then. And the Bradmill Factory and Lightpainting go hand in hand.
Bradmill
The place is massive.. and I do mean massive—all 24 hectares of it. Opening in 1927 and producing fabrics in heavy-duty cotton and canvas products it was abandoned in 2007 when manufacturing moved overseas. The main buildings are huge, open floor areas, pocked with small and alarmingly deep holes. Every wall is covered with graffiti and every window is broken. Broken glass, empty bottles, burnt mattresses, wrecked and burnt-out cars lie discarded. Not a single intact external or internal door exists. Access is beyond easy. Park the vehicle and walk in.
Exploring the furnace
The light painting was starting at dark, but I wanted to get another go at the site in daylight and my first stop was the old furnace. We crawled in through the small opening and looked straight up the chimney. Adorning the walls inside was a white walker scene. everyone’s a GOT fan 🙂
Leaving the furnace we headed to the little house..apparently, coal was unloaded here, and gone up the conveyor into the main building the fire the boilers. After deciding the conveyor was sturdy enough and seeing another two photographers and two models head up there as well, we entered the little house and walked up the conveyor. It’s not too bad a hike up there… I’m not young, and I made it though the heart was pumping by the time I got to the top 😉
The Boiler Room
At the top, we found a mesh walkway with a tantalising glimpse of stairs the floors below. This top room had machinery and rollers but we could see better machinery downstairs so we headed back down the conveyor again and found an opening on ground level. Once inside again we headed up the stairs one level and hit the mother lode on the first floor…..
Lightpainting
As it was getting close to meet-up time for the light painting, we left the machinery room and headed back over to the main buildings. Lightpainting at Bradmill is fantastic, and Bill and Deanne Holmer are the Light painting maestros. They are like the love children of Mc Gyver, where they take a bottle opener, two nails and a rubber band and create something unique.
All of their light-emitting equipment is original, designed and made by them. They put on an excellent LED light show for about 30 of us, tripods lined up in front, the camera’s on bulb, with Bill calling the ‘shutter open’ and ‘shutter closed. After the LEDs, they followed up with the steel wool spinning. The factory by now was black as pitch, and when the steel wool spins, it throws out amazing sparks, dancing across the floor and roof. And standing in the middle is our own ‘God of Fire’
The Maltings at Mittagong had been on my ‘decaying, decrepit places I must visit before they are razed to the ground’ list for some time. At the urging of my travelling companion, who seemed to think there were 30 hours of daylight each day, we added it to the travelling plan of our south coast trip. Leaving Kiama and travelling to Sydney, we took a detour to Mittagong.
History
The Mittagong Maltings Works was established initially by the Maltings Company of NSW (Ltd) and operated from August 1899. Tooth and Company Limited purchased the Mittagong Works in 1905 and produced the malt used in Tooth & Co breweries in Sydney. The early 1940s was an active period, with malt’s output being approximately 200,000 bushels annually. This output was severely restricted following a large fire in August 1942, which completely gutted No.2 Malthouse and damaged No.1. The No.1 Malthouse was returned to service early in 1943. The No.2 Malthouse was completely rebuilt during the early 1950s and recommenced active operation in 1953. The process continued until another fire gutted the No.3 Malthouse in 1969. Tooths & Co continued to operate at the site until 1980 when the works were closed and the site sold to a group of local business people [Archives Collection, Australian National University]
Location
Located in Mittagong and bordered on one side by Ferguson Cres and Southey Street, it sits among housing slowly encroaching its borders. We parked in Southey St and entered through a wide-open chain-link gate. We explored the main building, first entering under a missing door to the right of the Tooheys horse insignia. The building is beautiful despite years of neglect and vandalism. Graffiti in the main building is minimal, however. This floor contained gorgeous old arched entryways between rooms, tall roof supports and an actual exposed ceiling 😉
We could not get to the second floor. Even though it appeared solid concrete, I had left my wings at home and brought common sense instead, so we didn’t climb up there. There was a staircase, but all the steps were gone. So leaving the main building, we headed down a little path to see where it led.
The Second building
This led us to the second Maltings building, lovely brickwork with arched windows again, interesting rubble… this was looking good.
Again ‘they’ had left the door open for us, so we went straight in. It was in pretty good shape for a building that’s been abandoned for 30 years. Kudo’s to the 1899 builders; they built things to last! We found a wooden staircase that looked safe enough, and we headed upstairs to the graffiti we could see through the cracks on the floor above.
Puddles! I love puddles and the reflections they make in these old buildings. But, unfortunately, this room must be close to a swimming pool in wet weather from mould and moss on the walls.
Heading back down, we went to the machinery shed. It still has remnants of old equipment, chains, rubble, giant cogs and tiny windows that look into a semi-subterranean level partly filled with water.
Through the arched windows above, you can see down into the lower level with its arched ceiling
Access to the Maltings
On the day we visited, the buildings were easy to get into, parking is right out front though it’s possible to drive your car right through the gate and up to the building. Security is nonexistent. None of the nearby residents was concerned with us wandering around with cameras. Both buildings are good, but the second was better, purely because there was more we could explore, unlike building one, in this one we could get to the upper floors.
Buddy System
I would definitely suggest taking a friend with you, though. It’s not somewhere I would go alone. Too many holes in the floor to fall through, debris to fall over and break a leg, etc.. It’s a great location, easy to spend a few hours there, but it is a large block with all the dangers that go with derelict buildings. The staircase in the second building is pretty sturdy; the one in the machine shop wobbled a bit when I tried it, and it doesn’t go all the way to the top floor. The staircase in the main building is gone. Someone has removed all the wooden steps.
The Shipwrecks and Wetlands of Homebush Bay are stunning. They are also a credit to the reclamation and beautification of old industrial locations, with paths, cycle tracks, wetlands, and shipwrecks.
Location
Previously a heavy industrial area, the wrecks are situated on the south bank of the Parramatta River. This was also the location of Sydney Olympic Park for the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Because the river is heavily polluted with dioxin, heavy metals and other chemicals, fishing is banned in the river. The shipwrecks were the remains of ships and barges from a ship-breaking yard in 1966. Behind are four ships’ hulls and several smaller barges protected under the Shipwrecks Act, 1976. This act applies to all shipwrecks over seventy-five years old. Relics over fifty years old and located in lakes and rivers are protected under the NSW Heritage Act, 1977.
We took a day trip down here to photograph the shipwrecks. However, after a week of sunrise starts, we were too slow getting out of bed and arrived mid-morning. Unfortunately, the sunrise had gone, and the sun was high in the sky. The shots I wanted weren’t possible due to the light, so we had to make do.
SS Ayrfield
The SS Ayrfield was a steam collier of 1140 tonnes and 79.1m in length. It was built in the UK in 1911 and registered in Sydney in 1912. Purchased by the Commonwealth Govt, it was used to transport supplies to American troops stationed in the Pacific region during WWII. She’s now far more beautiful with lush shrubs and trees growing on her decks and sits directly outside an apartment block. The best spots to photograph her are from the apartment block’s front or on the little footbridge. And at early light.
SS Heroic
A stunning display of rusting beauty, The Heroic is a steel-hulled steam tugboat of 258 tonnes and 38.1m in length. It lies just near the mangroves. The Heroic was built at South Shields, the UK, in 1909 for Thomas Fenwick [tugboat operators] of Sydney. It was commandeered by the British Admiralty, renamed Epic, and engaged in rescue work off the Scilly Isles during WWI. By 1919, it was back in Sydney as a working tug. During WWII, it towed Allara back to Sydney after that ship had been torpedoed off Sydney.
SS Mortlake Bank
The Mortlake Bank has been broken up, and only the stern section and part of the bow remain floating approximately 50m northeast of SS Ayrfield. The Mortlake Bank was a steel-hulled steam collier weighing 1371 tonnes and 71.65m long. It was built in the Wallsend-on-Tyne in the UK in 1924 and was purchased by a Melbourne company. The Mortlake operated between Hexham and Mortlake, transporting coal to the Mortlake Gasworks of the Australian Gas Light Company. On 31 May 1942, during WWII, SS Mortlake Bank entered Sydney Harbour. She passed through the anti-submarine boom net when the Japanese midget submarine (M-24) made entry under the ship’s keel.
Waterbird Refuge
If you follow the 1.3 km walking track past the shipwrecks, the other side of the path is home to the salt marshes of the Waterbird Refuge. We spotted several different bird species on our shipwreck spotting walk.
Well worth a day trip is Trentham Falls and the Railway Station. And if coming in from Melbourne, the bakery at Woodend is a must to stop at! Trentham is a little town with a population of 1,411 nestled at the top of the Great Dividing Range. It’s halfway between Woodend and Daylesford and is an easy one hour from Melbourne up the Calder Hwy. The Falls are just a couple of kms out of town. On Sunday, we were there, the carpark was packed, and people were constantly coming and going.
The Falls
The falls flowed well when we visited in August. They are only a short 70-metre (downhill) walk from the carpark. The lookout above the falls is quite good. It formed millions of years ago from molten lava rapidly cooling along the river. They are Victoria’s highest single-drop waterfall, plunging 32 metres into the quartz riverbed below. The Trentham website called it the ‘former’ river, but there was a river flowing the day we were there. I had planned on setting the tripod up in front of the base of the falls. But the water was too deep.
The track to the base of the falls is ‘closed’ with signs of unstable cliffs, but that stopped no one. The barrier is about 2ft high, and no impediment to stepping over or around. So we followed the goat track to the base of the falls and spent a pleasant half-hour down there among the mist, hitting the rocks, photographing the falls and the river. Going back up was a little more complicated. I felt like a veritable explorer. Until I saw a man with his pregnant wife and small son strolling down the goat track!
Trentham Railway Station
Leaving the falls, we headed into Trentham to visit the historic railway station. The station was built in 1880 but closed in the 1970s. It has been restored with some rolling stock and buildings open as a railway museum. A small market is held there on Sundays.
As it was now mid-afternoon, we decided to head back to Woodend for afternoon tea before heading back to Melbourne. After walking uphill and down dale at the falls, then around the station, we were well and truly ready for a sit-down and cuppa!
Looking for more victorian waterfalls? Check out HERE
Light Painting with Orbs and Steel Wool had been on my list of “awesome things I must do” ever since I saw a photograph of someone twirling steel wool. Finally, last night, in an old disused factory guided by the highly knowledgeable and fantastic Bill and Deanne Holmer. I scratched that itch and then some.
Lightpainting Tools
We started with a brief chat on what they use. Just about all of which is made by themselves, from your everyday household items (think secret love children of McGyver). This was followed by the critical safety message of ‘don’t fall in any holes. Being a disused factory frequented by morons who can’t stand the sight of an unbroken window, there was glass and debris everywhere. And lots of holes that used to once house equipment footings etc., Bill twirled and swirled his lights, spun the wool to many encores.
Follow the Leader
We lined up in front with tripods and snapped away. We were all using bulb mode, with Bill calling when to “shutter open and shutter off”. I hadn’t used bulb before, and it was fun to do. And something I plan to do more of. At the end of the group shooting, we broke off into smaller groups and, using their lights, experimented some more.
Orbs
I had moved off to photograph an old car as we played lights over it. Bill joined us and quickly set up a new scene. The shutter is on, light up the car, play red lights over it, then blue lights on the wall. Follow this up with an EL wire coil that glows and looks like smoke due to the motion blur. The end effect was incredible and something I wouldn’t have known how to do without his help.
They forgot one crucial safety warning: Caution, light painting can be addictive!
I love everything old, decrepit, falling down, rusty and abandoned, and Larundel Mental Asylum, Bundoora, fits that bill perfectly. It housed around 750 patients at its peak. But unfortunately, Larundel closed down in the 1990s when the push came to de-institutionalize those in mental wards across the country and move them into community care.
Closing the Asylums
Also closed around the same time was Willsmere in Kew, Sunbury Mental Asylum, Janefield, Bundoora, and Aradale at Ararat and Mayday Hills. The fact that all these buildings sat on vast lots of high-value land. The land was subsequently sold to developers by the government for millions of dollars; profit is still something to consider.
Many outbuildings at Larundel have been pulled down, with just a few remaining. What’s left is heavily vandalized. I wish I were more into urban exploring and photography back then. I would have loved to have gotten in before it was trashed. Unfortunately, it has become a haven for vandals and graffiti ‘artists’ since the closure.
A very wet Sunday
I have visited a couple of times and recently made another trip with a group of fellow photographers. We met there one very, very wet Sunday afternoon. We photographed the derelict hallways and rooms for the next couple of hours.
There is a rumour that a 5 yr old girl haunts one floor, back from when it was emergency wartime housing. The rumour goes that you sometimes hear her music box. Like all good rumours, it’s probably an urban legend, but it makes you cautious wandering around.
The Wimmera Silo Art Trail is planned to be 200km long and lies within the Wimmera Mallee Region. The Wimmera is a large, flat region in the North West of Victoria, regarded as Victoria’s agricultural heart. A significant proportion of the world’s wheat and barley is produced in the Wimmera. The wheat silos dominate the landscape of every town, small and large.
Horsham Overnight
We drove up from Melbourne the day after Boxing Day, staying overnight in Horsham near the start of the Wimmera Silo Art Trail. The weather in Melbourne had been somewhat erratic, with a scorching hot Christmas day and a mild and wet Boxing Day. Driving up, we had rain on and off all day, but the temps were still pleasant. Leaden grey skies are not my favourite photographic background, though, and we had our fingers crossed we would get blue skies the further north we drove.
Grey Skies
We woke to more grey skies, and it rained the following day. The weather forecast was rain and high winds. Loading up the car in the rain as we booked out, it looked like we would have a wasted trip. I wanted fields of yellow grass and blue skies! Leaving Horsham, we passed through Dooen and Jung and stopped briefly to shoot the silos. Our goal was to shoot as many silos as possible.
Just after leaving Dooen, the heavens opened. We were photographing train tracks and silos in the rain, attracting confused looks from cars driving past.
From Dooen, we drove to Jung, a tiny town with a population of 246 and just 18 km northeast of Horsham. The name came from the Parish of Jung Jung, derived from an Aboriginal expression of uncertain meaning but ingloriously recorded as meaning a big mess in some places.
Murtoa
While still a small town, it was much bigger than tiny Jung and boasted a population of 991 in the 2011 Census. Murtoa comes from a local Aboriginal word meaning “home of the lizard”. The silos at Murtoa can hold 400,000 tonnes of grain and is Australia’s largest inland receival centre. Before long, we were getting occasional breaks in the cloud. Then, finally, we were getting some sun and patchy blue skies!
Rapunyup
Next stop, we were heading to Rapunyup. The name is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘branch hanging over the water. With a population of 549, we weren’t expecting a metropolis. But Rapunyup, like the towns before it, was deserted. I beg to differ on the “town with a pulse”. We started to feel like we were heading the wrong way. Had everyone left town for the city? Had there been a warning of an approaching zombie apocalypse?
Leaving Rapunyup behind, we headed to Minyup. While Minyip has no painted silo and isn’t part of the Wimmera Silo Art Trail, it’s a town you must go past to get to Sheep Hills. With a population of 667, Minyip’s claim to fame is the town where they shot the Flying Doctors TV series, with the senior citizens centre becoming ‘coopers crossing flying doctors base’. ‘Minyip’ means ‘ashes’ in the language of the local Aborigines.
We left Minyip and headed for Sheep Hills with a quick stop at the Nullen Sidings. By now, we had glorious blue skies and puffy white clouds, and the temperature was climbing and sitting at around 35C.
Sheep Hills
Sheep Hills had a population of 189 in 2006, and no population was recorded in 2011. Not sure what the significance of putting a silo there is. Graincorp, the owner of all the silos, closed the Sheephills silos in 2003, so maybe that is why there is no population there anymore. The Wimmera silo art trail starts at Sheep Hills, as Rapunyup wasn’t ‘online’ yet. The Sheep Hills silos are painted by Matt Adnate, an internationally renowned Melbourne artist. Matt is well-known for the indigenous portraits on walls and canvas.
Our next stop after Sheep Hills was Warracknabeal for lunch and a stretch of the legs. The weather was a balmy 38C with blue skies. While Warracknabeal was a much larger town, it still had a closed-up look about it the day we were there. Nevertheless, we found one fish and chip shop open and enjoyed a delicious lunch.
Then we headed off again towards the next one with a quick stop at Galaquil to shoot each other on the deserted rail line. We were thanking our planning on bringing insect nets for our hats. We learnt very quickly to put them on BEFORE getting out of the car. The flies descended in their millions as soon as we got out, though; for the pics below, we sucked it up and worked quickly 😉
Brim
With a population of around 260, no pub, no school, Brim is a tiny town on the Henty Highway just north of Warracknabeal. The locals hope the tourists will come now that they have the silos. Painted by Brisbane artist Guido Van Helton, they were the first silos to be painted. The silo was initially planned to be the only one. However, such interest in them was that five more towns were added, and the Silo Art Trail was born.
Between Brim and Patchewollock, we drove into Beaulah, another silo, another abandoned railway line with a quietly decaying station. The insect net and hat went on, and we wandered around the station, giving the crystal ball a workout.
Patchewollock
We were nearing Sea Lake, our overnight destination. Our last stop before our evening destination was Patchewollock. The silo’s here were painted by Fintan Magee, and like the Brim silo, they depict a local farmer. A tiny town on the edge of the Big Desert in the Mallee, it’s reportedly to have a population of 431, but I have my doubts. Unfortunately, Patchewollock had a couple of closed stores, a park and no internet access. This was a minor disaster because we relied on our phones for navigation. It necessitated a drive back in the opposite direction for about 30 km to reconnect, get Sea Lake on Google Maps, turn around, and head back again.
Sea Lake
When we arrived at Sea Lake, the temperature was firmly settled at 40C. We were booked into the Sea Lake Motel, but they had lost power with the high winds that afternoon, so the aircon hadn’t been on long. As a result, the room was just as hot inside as out. Before leaving our room, we ensured the aircon was running well and went to the pub for dinner. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the aircon on either. I don’t think they had aircon, period. Meals were typical country fare (deep-fried and overcooked), but the beer and wine were cold and cheap.
Following dinner, we headed to Lake Tyrell. The lake was just about dry, with a few puddles too far off to reach. The wind was blowing a gale. I set the tripod up but hung onto it for dear life to stabilise it. I managed a couple of shots of the setting sun before I gave up and dived back into the car’s safety.
Dimboola
The following day was overcast again with showers. We were heading back to Melbourne via Jeparit and Dimboola. The Dimboola pink salt lake is just beautiful, and while we did stop at a few other small silo towns on the way, we were under the pump to get to the airport for my travelling photographer friend to catch her flight home. We ended up getting there with about 20 minutes to spare. Fortunately for her, her flight was delayed due to the storm that hit us as we drove down.
We covered just over 1,000 kms, driving through wind, rain, blazing temps, storms, and flies. Fortunately, we didn’t encounter any snakes. If you decide to do the Silo Art Trail Rapanyup, Lascelles and Rosebery will be completed by mid-2017. Make sure you have hats, sunscreen, bug spray, insect nets for your hats, and lots of water and snack supplies in the car.
A lot of the little towns aren’t exactly open for business. So, keep an eye on the fuel gauge. Many towns don’t have a petrol station, so fill up in Horsham, Sea Lake and Dimboola. And take a map, as your phone maps won’t work in Patchewollock. (Then you’ll be in the middle of nowhere without a clue like we were).
