Tourism, the great white hope of so many provincial cities and towns across Australia, usually seems a distant possibility in communities not gifted with tangible attractions: but now the silo art movement generates fresh hope in the most unlikely places.

One by one, whistle-stop communities scattered out along the tracks that carry strings of railcars, laden with grain, bound for distant mills and markets, are flaunting gigantic works of art which adorn the once-blank walls of towering wheat silos. Street artists, known only by a nom-de-guerre and accustomed to working in seedy downtown alleyways, have won commissions to adorn these massive blank 'canvasses' with their work. Joining the dots, as it were, creates Silo Art Trails which tempt city-dwellers away from coffee shops and out onto lonely country roads.

These images are from our recent road trip into the wheat-growing plains of northeast Victoria, and include some scenes from our journey home, up the King Valley and over the ranges to Mansfield and down to Melbourne.

More silo art installations discovered during a later journey which more or less followed the Murray River downstream through NW Victoria and the South Australian Riverland.