Hello & welcome to our blog of our 2023 Australian mainland holiday.
We have a few overseas followers who follow our adventures, so we are including details of roads & locations as we know they follow us on Google Earth.
Rupanyup is a small wheatbelt town in an area that now specialises in growing lentils, chickpeas and beans. In 1998 it became famous as the town to challenge the quartet of big banks by opening the first branch of the Bendigo Bank Community bank. Today it is a quiet service town with a pub, a supermarket, a takeaway, bank, post office and newsagency, surrounded by bushland. The silo art in Rupanyup was created by a Russian mural artist and depicts two local sporting team members. Rupanyup also has a Fireman mural and numerous wooden carvings.
Close to Rupanyup is Murtoa. Murtoa lies in the vast Wimmera grain farming district of Victoria and due to its central position, direct railway line between Melbourne and Adelaide and closeness to the major highways it has always served as a major hub for the grain handling industry.
The largest inland grain terminal in Victoria, operated by GrainCorp, was established here as early as in 1930s. The receival centre known as ‘Marmalake’ developed rapidly as bulk handling overtook bags during WWII and the original storage facilities, called “Stick Sheds”, were built to house the large volume of grain. Originally built as a war-time emergency grain storage in 1941, this unique, Australian Heritage Listed structure has become a remarkable example of Aussie ingenuity and the local farming community.
It was constructed using over 560 natural mountain ash poles and is 270m in length. Soaring to 19m in height and a width of 60m, it gives the impression of a grand cathedral. For that reason it is often referred to as “The Cathedral of the Wimmera”. It used to hold an incredible 92,500 tonnes of grain and was closed in 1989 as no longer being economical. We also checked out some silo art.
Further west of Murtoa is the the town of Horsham, where we shopped at the supermarket, used a laundromat and dined at a nice but expensive café. The Horsham silo art is a magnificent picture of a black cockatoo and an aboriginal man.
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