Visiting South Australia’s Latest Silo Art - Cowell

Early in November, South Australia’s latest painted Silo Art Site, in Cowell on the Eyre Peninsula was complete and it was put on our bucket list to visit, having to work around Fiona’s days off work. For a couple of weeks the weather was not so good for the long drive, so when the weather forecast was looking fine, we then had four days to get things into shape and commit ourselves to the drive.

With an extra early start to the day, we left Clare in perfect conditions and enjoyed the drive and our first stop, was at Port Augusta. Once clear of the city, traffic on the road was quiet and we had a good run through to Cowell. Before going to the new Silo Art Site, we headed out of town and took the Birdseye Highway to one special place that I found on Wikicamps Australia, the site where the famous May Gibbs first lived as a young child when she arrived in Australia as a young girl.

At her time of living here, memories were etched into her mind and her famous Gum Nut Babies were born and all Aussie children were brought up on her famous stories. While heading back into Cowell, an old ruin caught my eye, so again it was another stop to inspect the special site of the former Mindrow Creek School that operated between 1913 to 1938. Todays generation do not know lucky they are, as over 100 years ago, there were no luxuries of electricity, air conditioning and basic household items that we all take for granted today.


With the site GPS positioned and lots of photos, it was time to head back into Cowell, but while heading back, there was yet another memorial that we stopped to see, the memorial to Sylvia Jessie Katherine Birdseye, an incredible lady that pioneered overland mail and passenger bus services between Adelaide and the Eyre Peninsula in 1928, and in over 43 years she had drove an incredible four million miles, or nearly six and a half million kilometres, and today the road between Cowell and Cleve and further on, is named in her honour, the Birdseye Highway.

The new Silo Art is best viewed by driving into the local oval, where you have lots of room and can get back and admire the great work. From there we headed into the main street and time for lunch, before then going to their local boat ramp and then parking and did the small Mangrove Boardwalk.




As with any road trip, it was time to head back toward home with a couple of other planned stops along the way. We arrived back in Whyalla and we visited a couple of lookouts that we have wanted to see before another detour, back to Point Lowly.

We had the place to ourselves when we arrived there and it was still as good as it ever is, and we checked out a couple of free camping spots while there.

It was a good easy run back to Port Augusta, but time was now really slipping by. There are couple of lookouts to see there, but we only had time to visit one, as we really are not that far from there and will visit the other when we head back there again.

It was an early tea while in Port Augusta before the last final run back to Clare. While we were heading through Crystal Brook, there was one last stop for the day, a stone cairn of some importance that we had seen earlier in the day, and to be honest, had never seen it before. The Cairn turned out to be another memorial to the Goyder's Line, and to think we had driven past this site dozens of times over the years.



Stephen Langman



December 2019