Merriwa Silo Art - New South Wales

The township of Merriwa is in New South Wales and is situated on the Golden Highway, midway between Newcastle and Dubbo. It is an ideal place for a stopover and is centrally positioned between Dubbo, Newcastle, Tamworth and Bathurst. Merriwa offers many different activities and attractions and now boasts the first ever painted GrainCorp Silo in New South Wales.

The mural depicts an image of sheep wearing red socks in a canola field.

But why are the sheep wearing red socks you might ask?

Every year on the June long weekend is the Merriwa Festival of the Fleeces. It is an event that generates much-needed funds for Merriwa, a Westpac Rescue Helicopter and District Volunteer Rescue Squads. The Festival is an event that the whole community can become involved in and enjoy. It has been a major Upper Hunter event since its creation in 1990. It was established to promote the best of agriculture that Merriwa has to offer with a focus on the history of the Merino Sheep and how this industry shaped a community. Each year a special parade event is held called the 'Running of the Sheep'.

The origins of the running of the red-socked sheep comes from when one of the sponsor couldn't give us money so they gave us red socks and the committee back then said well what are we going to do with the socks?

Then someone said "well how about we put them on the sheep" and that's how it all started.

So the sheep now wear red socks as they run down the street.

International art management company Authority Creative represented Melbourne born artist David Lee Pereira, in his first ever silo mural creation. After visiting Merriwa and meeting with Upper Hunter Shire Council and members of the Merriwa community including - and perhaps most importantly - the school kids, David was inspired to create an artwork that was distinctive of the place, unique to the site and represented something the community would be proud of. 

The Merriwa Silos are the 29th silos to be included in the Australian Silo Art Trail Collection and were completed 23rd April 2019.

The completion of the Merriwa Silos would not have been possible without the support of Merriwa Tourism and Promotion Committee for their ongoing work and GrainCorp for their agreement to partner in the public art project.