There are plenty of beautiful sights to see when road-tripping in Australia, and some of the best of these have been captured on the larger-than-life murals decorating silos in rural towns around the country. And the Australian Silo Art Trail has created an easy way to track them all down and plan your next art-filled road trip.
The Silo Art Ultimate Guide (Fourth Edition) is a collaboration of five years of meticulous effort by the team at The Australian Silo Art Trail to curate the largest art trail in the world. This souvenir coffee table book showcases high-quality photographs of some of the most amazing mega murals around Australia. With almost 230 pages, the spiral-bound book contains 61 silo art locations which were completed at its time of printing, and more than 170 water tower artworks.
The painted silo art phenomenon has spread across Australia and was sparked by the desire to renew appreciation and perceptions of Australia’s small towns and rural communities and thereby boost local economies.
The idea for the Australian Silo Art Trail (ASAT) was inspired after Annette Green and her husband attempted a self-guided silo art road trip around Australia, only to realise there was no single resource to find the sites. This spurred Annette to create a Facebook page for travellers to share information, and then launch the ASAT website in 2019.
The ASAT website and accompanying guides were created to help others easily track down and plan their visits to the wonderful artworks that have sprung up around the country. And as you will realise within the first few pages, the ASAT hasn’t just stopped at painted silo artworks, but also incorporated painted water towers and buildings and artistic sculptures, which are listed as points of interest for each region.
The Silo Art Ultimate Guide is broken down into the six states that currently feature painted silo art. The states are then narrowed down into regional trails, with 15 total throughout the book — a journey that would cover more than 10,000km. There is a table of contents, coloured tabs and an index for navigational ease, and detailed maps and precise street locations for each listing.
- New South Wales — Upper Region
- New South Wales — Lower Region
- Sydney Outer Suburbs
- Queensland — North
- Queensland — Coastal
- Queensland — West
- South Australia
- South Australia — Yorke Peninsula
- Tasmania
- Victoria — North West
- Victoria — North East
- Victoria — South West
- Victoria — South East
- Western Australia — Lower
- Western Australia — Upper
At the start of each regional trail, the silo art murals and points of interest in the area are listed with an accompanying map with the corresponding town locations. Please note, the locations are numbered in alphabetical order, rather than a specific route. Readers can use the map as a handy visual aid and choose the best order depending on what direction you’re starting from.
This page also includes an easy reference guide for the artist’s name and the completion date of the artwork, as well as ASAT’s ‘Travellers Tips’. These tips are unique for every region, offering recommendations for caravan parks that are a good base camp to visit the nearby painted silos, some information on the nearby towns, or even advice on the access road to the silo.
The guide then dedicates a page to each painted silo, offering the reader detailed information for locating the silo (address, GPS coordinates and a zoomed-in map), a large photo for reference, and more information about the artwork and the artist/s behind it. A similar, albeit shorter, breakdown is given to each of the points of interest to visit in that region.
And as you’re working your way through the comprehensive guide, don’t miss the fun quiz questions that pop up to test how much you’ve been paying attention.
The Silo Art Ultimate Guide is a great way to learn more about the wonderful artworks around Australia and appreciate them not only for their visual beauty but also the history, inspiration and rural areas and towns that inspired them. So, grab a copy, and start planning your art-filled road trip now!
The Silo Art Ultimate Guide can be purchased online for $69.95 at the Australian Silo Art Trail website, or on A247 (use the code ADVENTURES24 for 10 per cent off your total purchase)
If you want a good companion guide for young children, check out the The Kids' Lap Bible.
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