The Australian Silo Art Trail: The Ultimate Guide

Here at Hema Maps, we love sending Aussies off on fresh new adventures, whether that be on challenging 4WD tracks or stunning holiday destinations. Australia is as beautiful as it is large, and some of the best sights to see have been captured magnificently on the larger-than-life murals decorating silos in rural towns around the country.

And to help Aussies plan their next art-filled road trip, The Australian Silo Art Trail has created The Ultimate Guide 2023, a comprehensive guide of all the silo art and water tower locations around Australia in one spiral-bound coffee table book.

The Australian Silo Art Trail

As many postcards and holiday social media pics from adventurous Aussies will attest, the silo art mural phenomenon has been steadily spreading around the country. The first silos were painted in Northam, WA, in March 2015 with the aim to bring art to a rural community. And since then, plenty of others have joined it, all united by the desire to bring beauty to Australia’s rural communities and renew appreciation and perceptions of these rural towns.

But while these stunning artworks continued to spring up in Australia's vast landscapes, there was no single resource for travellers to find information about the silos and their locations. Thus, the idea of The Australian Silo Art Trail (ASAT) was born. Founder Annette Green and her husband Eric were two such travellers who attempted a self-guided silo art road trip around Australia, only to realise there was no straightforward way to plan this journey. Seeking a way to solve the issue, Annette created a Facebook page for travellers to share information, and then launched the official ASAT website in 2019.

The ASAT website and accompanying printed guides provide just what Annette and Eric were missing — a single location where all the completed silo artworks and other large murals are listed so as to easily plan a road trip to visit them.

Annette and Eric Green

The Ultimate Guide 2023 

The Ultimate Guide 2023 was developed over five years by the ASAT team, who were driven to curate the largest art trail in the world. The souvenir coffee table book spans almost 230 pages and features stunning high-quality photographs of the 55 silo art locations (which were completed at the book’s time of printing) and more than 150 water tower artworks.

The guide is separated into the six states that currently feature painted silo art (New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania), so readers can easily find the sites that will correspond with their road trip. Within each state section there are specific regional trails — a total of 13 throughout the book — which cover more than 10,000km throughout Australia.

At the beginning of each regional trail section, the silo art and other points of interest (such as painted water tanks and buildings and artistic sculptures) are listed alongside a map featuring the corresponding town locations.

One important thing to note about the regional trails is that the locations are listed in alphabetical order rather than a specific route to follow. The map comes in handy here — readers can use it as a visual aid to choose the best first stop depending on which direction they are coming from, making the travel experience unique to each adventurer.

The opening of each regional trail also features a quick reference guide for the artist’s name and the date of when the mural was completed, as well as ASAT’s ‘Travellers Tips’. These tips are unique for every region and include recommendations for caravan parks to utilise in the area when visiting the silos, some helpful or insightful information about the town and even advice on the access road to the silo.

Each painted silo has a page dedicated to it, featuring a large reference photo, information for locating the silo (the address, GPS coordinates and a zoomed-in map) and more detailed information about the artwork and the artist/s who created it. The points of interest to visit in that region are also given a similar but shorter explanation.

One other fun element of the guide is the quiz questions that pop up throughout the book to test how much you’ve been paying attention.

The Ultimate Guide can be purchased online via the Hema Maps store for $89, and makes for the perfect road trip companion or coffee table inspiration while planning your next art-filled adventure around Australia.

Next steps

At Hema Maps, we strive to provide the most comprehensive and accurate maps and guides for outdoor enthusiasts looking to explore Australia's natural wonders.

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