Final product: Thousands of visitors have viewed the Kyabram water tank mural since it was completed in March this year.
Eyesore: Looking at the water tank before painting shows just how much of an enormous lift the artwork has made to the precinct.
Kyabram’s amazing water tank mural project will be officially opened next Tuesday — five years after the concept was a pipe dream of a dedicated band of volunteers who revitalised the railway station precinct to its current state.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
Kyabram Project Committee president Allan Weeks has been at the pointy end of the campaign to realise the mural project’s completion.
With Secretary Joy Salter, Barry Churches, Terry Scott, Phil Chalmers (Joy’s partner) and Neil Gillon, who has been the groundskeeper at the location, the September 20 opening of the mural and picnic area will bring to fruition Allan’s dream.
Mr Weeks said aside from the handful of volunteers who had seen the project from start to finish, there were several other contributors from the wider community.
“Sue Solly was the person who originally put the grant submission together to go to Mark Gepp’s office. That was vital,” he said.
“And there has been a mixture of people who have been involved.”
None of the group has an artistic background, motivated solely by the goal to provide Kyabram with a tourism attraction.
The project has been developed in two stages, the mural tank project itself and then the mural picnic area.
Joy Salter described the project as “great for tourism in our area”.
“I don’t think anyone in the main street realised the potential of the site,” she said.
“Now we have bus loads of people who just turn up in town and visit the many coffee shops and eating venues.”
The mural was painted in February last year by renowned silo tank artist Jimmy Dvate.
Mr Weeks first met the artist at Goorambat in 2017.
“I always said that If we did anything like this then he would be the man to do it. We contacted the Shire of Benalla and then approached GV Water, and things rolled on from there,” he said.
“We worked on the plan to paint the water tower for 18 months, only to find out it had a historic overlay, and couldn’t be done.
“Then we were offered the water tank, instead of the tower.”
The group then had to come up with the money.
An $8000 kick-start from the Kyabram Community Planning Fund snowballed into a grant from the Victorian Government through the Community Support Fund of $80,000 and a $10,000 grant from Kyabram Club, which was matched by the Kyabram Community Bank.
“We made Barry Churches the liaison officer and received some huge donations from people,” Mr Weeks said.
“It was during COVID, not a great time to fund raise, that a majority of that work was done.
“It surprised us how generous people were with their money, there were several donations upwards of $1000 and even up to $2000.”
The interpretive panels will be the next component of the project, the group currently working with Goulburn Valley Water to complete their design.
“They are one and a half metres square. On one side of the first panel they will have the original water tower and its history, then an explanation of how the filtration system operates on the opposite side,” Mr Weeks said.
Another of the panels will have a detailed history of the platform and the trains.
“On the wall of the shelter we will acknowledge all the contributors to the project and those who have completed in kind work at the location,” Mr Weeks said.
The site has had a huge amount of visitors, more than 2000 have signed the book, which Mr Weeks said probably means there has been triple that amount to have visited the site.
“We have a visitors’ book up there, but only a portion write in it,” he said
Mr Weeks said there was one thing he would like to see happen in Kyabram in the short term.
“I’d love to see the outside wall of the skate park painted and then given to the children to come up with designs to be put on it,” he said.
The before and after photographs of the mural project don’t show fully the work that went into completing the site, a massive 260 tonne of rock went down on the platform before it was re-developed.
And the countless meetings, negotiations and re-jig of designs that allowed the group to reach this stage are now a distant memory.
The project committee is hoping to have more than 100 people at the opening of the water tank mural.
Due to Parliamentary commitments State Member for Northern Victoria Mark Gepp is unable to attend and Goulburn Valley Water managing director Steve Capewell will now officially open the mural project.
On the day there will be demonstrations by the Peppercorn Forge Blacksmith Group and students from Kyabram P-12 College will be providing the music.
The Lions Club of Kyabram will be providing a free sausage sizzle and gelato and Joel’s Coffee van will also be available.
Build it and ...: Visitors to the site now have facilities available to them to ensure the viewing is a pleasant experience.
Mural platform before: Hundreds of tonnes of rock was used to level the platform before the development of the viewing area.
