Yarram – Heesco Town

After leaving the farm it was a leisurely drive to Yarram through the Gippsland hills. Lots of lovely views from good, but very windy roads, until I reached the Princes freeway. After that it was reasonably flat country until I got into the hills on the approach to Yarram when I travelled through some green hills and lovely forests.

After setting up, I went off to see the street art in Yarram of which there are heaps. Between 2020-2023 Heesco, one of the best street artists in my opinion, painted 25 prominent murals in Yarram. The project was dubbed “Heesco Town” and it was a collaborative effort between local residents, business owners and Heesco. The idea was to help establish a tourist destination in the area long suffering due to the effects of bushfires followed by COVID.

My first stop was to the water tower where the tank section depicted local fauna and tourist attractions such as Agnes Falls, the 90 mile beach and the long jetty at Port Welshpool. Because of houses and fences around the tower it was impossible to capture all the top section so I include the graphic below from the Yarram heescotown.com website.

You can see part of this image on the tower below:

The hands are in the colours of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags, and the oval shapes are the five Shields of the aboriginal groups around Yarram. Heesco painted the silo but the design was by Sandra Pattern, a Gunaikurnai elder.

The local gym has a mural of the Australian Light Horse Soldiers riding like they did towards Beersheba where they made the famous charge to overrun the Ottoman garrison in world war one. This was the last cavalry charge in war.

The hotel in the nearby town of Alberton has a painting of a man handling beer barrels and a horse drawn dray full of barrels. A roof over the beer garden next to the pub made photography difficult.

In the memorial park in the centre of Yarram is a canvas mural in tribute to emergency workers, who were so important through the bushfires and COVID outbreak. The mural was displayed in Canberra before being installed in Yarram.

There were two good murals in a narrow alleyway but it was impossible to take a photo of them that looked any good so I just photographed a couple of people that were in one of the murals.

The men’s shed has paintings of men who worked in the Scammell’s construction business including members of the Scammell family. The firm built many of the buildings in the commercial part of Yarram and was a very important business in the area for many years.

The Coffee Palace is the oldest brick building in Yarram (1888) and the mural on the wall is of Ralph Vale an early pioneer in the district and a bullock team driver. Ralph drove his bullock team from Walhalla to Port Albert when an old man for the 150th anniversary of Port Albert. He even made boots for the bullocks out of old car tyres to protect their hooves on the bitumen roads. A parked car and a parking sign made photography difficult.

The final mural I will include is the one on MG Trading store which is of Bill McKenzie who working at the business for over 50 years. As Heesco was getting towards finishing the mural Bill visited and commented “It’s getting better”, but it turns out that Bill is actually delighted with the finished product.

There are a lot more murals around Yarram but these few will give you a taste of Yarram’s street art. The other thing that is good down here is the fish and chips on the wharf at Port Albert. They are still excellent and well worth a visit. It is takeaway but you can eat the takeaway on the wharf outside or inside, which I chose as it was freezing and blowing a gale outside.

So off home tomorrow, it’s too cold for me to be outside with such a cold wind but I have enjoyed the break.