Renmark Paringa

TOP END TRIP - MELBOURNE TO RENMARK

The journey begins…..
We finally made our escape from Melbourne on 22/6/21. Our first stop was Campbells Creek where we spent an enjoyable night with the Gissings, camping in their driveway. The next day we headed off to St. Arnaud, driving in the rain most of the way and set up camp there for the night. From St. Arnaud we headed off next morning to hit the silo art trail around the Wimmera/Mallee area. Our first stop was Rupanyup where the silos were painted in black and white portraits of two local youngsters in their sporting gear, then off we drove to Murtoa to have a look at the heritage listed Stick Shed which is a really impressive structure. The huge corrugated iron shed was built during WWII to store grain and is as big as 5 Olympic sized swimming pools and has 560 tall poles, some almost 20 metres high holding up its enormous roof. It’s a bit like an enormous cathedral inside and to think it only took four months to build back in 1941 proves how hard they must have worked. It was used to store grain until 1989. Next we headed north to Sheep Hills where the silos were painted very colourfully with portraits of four indigenous locals. Off we travelled past the Brim silos with their sepia portraits of four local farmers and on to Roseberry which also had sepia artworks of two locals.
After spending a night in Hopetoun we travelled on to see the Lascelles silos which were again painted in sepia style of local identities. The next town we headed to was Nullawil where the beautiful artwork depicted a black and tan working Kelpie dog and his master. This was my favourite as not only was it really detailed but the dog looked just like our old Kelpie, Dexter. Our next stop was Sea Lake where the immense artwork reflects the pink and orange colours of the nearby Lake Tyrrell sunsets. This one showed a young indigenous girl on a swing. Our final stop was at Patchewollock to see the local farmer nicknamed “Noodle” painted on the silos. Each of the sites was unique and well worth going out of our way to see. We spent the night at Ouyen caravan park.
On the morning of 26th June we set off towards the South Australia border and after stopping to dispose of (and eat) any fruit we were carrying we entered the fruit fly exclusion zone and the S.A. border. We had applied for and been granted our Covid border passes so when we stopped at the border checkpoint it was a relatively easy process and we didn’t even have to show proof of our access pass and found that there isn’t even a requirement to be Covid tested when entering now. We drove on to Renmark and checked in to the caravan park next to the Murray River.Read more