Patchewollock: Year of rain, babies, music and art for tiny Victorian town

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In Victoria's west, hundreds of kilometres from Melbourne, Patchewollock has had a season of art and music that has been "way out of the ordinary". They are hoping it will be the beginning of a new era for the tiny town.

Five hours' drive from Melbourne lies the tiny farming town Patchewollock, in Victoria's far north west.

It is a quiet place — there is no police station and last year there were just five reported crimes, up from a single reported incident two years before that.

Once you arrive, there is a convenience store, which is open in the mornings, and a pub, which starts trading at 4:00pm.

Julie Barnard works at both.

"Usually you have to be lost to come into town … the GPS will take you into town because you've lost signal."

In fact, it was only this year that a Telstra mobile phone tower was built in Patchewollock, putting an end to an old tradition of locals gathering at a particular sweet spot in the pub to get a bar or two of signal.

"A lot of farmers are quite happy about that, they can do a bit more business, without travelling miles to get to a hill to get some service," publican Michelle McDougall said.

The primary school closed a decade ago and the town has not been able to field a football team of their own since the 1980s.

In Victoria, it does not come much more isolated than this.

But on the third weekend of October almost 2,000 people made their way to Patchewollock, for their annual music festival, and one of those guests, Fintan Magee, stayed for a fortnight to paint the town's silos.

The locals have high hopes for what the transformed silos might do for their tiny community.

'He's got that farmer's look'

A city boy, originally from Brisbane, Magee arrived on the Thursday before the Patchewollock Music Festival and headed straight to the pub — the only place to stay in town — to meet the locals.

By Friday, he had decided farmer Nick Hulland would be the subject of his work.

"Nick happened to be in pretty good shape and he was tall enough, also he's got that farmer's look I guess," Magee said.

"He was kind of shy about being painted, which is also a plus, I don't want to paint people who want to be painted, I don't think that's a good sign if someone wants to be on a giant structure."

Hulland was indeed a reluctant pin-up, but he is also a local man who has watched his town dwindle as farms in the region have got "bigger and bigger and bigger".

"If it promotes the town I think it's good and the shop goes alright out of it, and the local pub that's good if we can make a few dollars for the town and get a few tourists for the area," he said.

"It's not something that I'd go out of my way to do, but it's there now, so I'll have to get used to it."

Another local farmer, and community spokesperson for the silo art project, Mikayla Mole kept track of Magee's progress from her family home in Patchewollock.

The 20-year-old went away to Melbourne for university, but she came back to join the family farm of three generations.

"I work with my dad, so we basically head off together and do odd jobs around the town, catch up with a few people and see how the day pans out," she said.

"I think I'm the only one around — female-wise — but that's OK, I like a challenge and proving to people that women can do it just as well as men can."

At the last official census count in 2011, Patchewollock and surrounds had a population count of just over 350, though locals now estimate it is around 150.

Most of the young farmer's friends have gone away to study and not yet come back, though she is hopeful they too might return.

"[The silo mural is] exactly what this town needs, we are slowly — unfortunately, I would say — [becoming] a dying town, but hopefully it brings a lot of life back and the shop can keep going, and a few other things it helps out," she said.

The signs are good, according to Vivian Yetman, who has lived in Patchewollock for 40 years and worked in early child care for 25 of them.

"This year I'm very happy to say we've probably got the most babies, about eight born this year, so that's looking fabulous for us," she said.

"Retaining our youth was always a big problem because we know that our children have to go away to study, but a few of them are coming back and starting their families, so that's nice."

Coupled with a year of heavy rain and bumper crops, it has been a good year for the Mallee town.

Bringing art, music to Patchewollock

Four years ago, Robin Yetman, Vivian's husband organised a free music festival in the town, for the year of the farmer.

Since then it has become an annual tradition, supported by businesses all over the region and organised by a committee made up of people from eight surrounding towns.

This year's festival was the biggest one yet, drawing a crowd of 1,800 people, 60 per cent of whom travelled more than 150 kilometres to be there.

Mr Yetman said organising the festival was a release from the "everyday activities of farming", but there was more to it than just a fun weekend.

"This north-west part of the state is so socially removed from what's obtainable in the larger towns and cities, so we feel that often — and it has been like this for decades — our younger generations miss out," he said.

"So we get a kick out of bringing this stuff and getting the younger generation involved."

While Magee was only a resident of the town for two weeks, the men's vision for this farming community in far flung Victoria are not too far apart.

"People out here are five hours away from the National Gallery of Victoria, for me I just want to focus on making art more a part of their lives," he said.

"I'm not going to pretend my mural's going to turn [the exodus of youth to the city] around, but hopefully it helps [create] a stronger sense of community and creates something people can be proud of."

Now finished, his mural is the second work of art, after a similar project was completed in Brim last summer, in what will become a silo art trail in six towns across the Wimmera Mallee, towards which the State Government has chipped in $200,000.

With the year-long attraction and the annual music festival, Mr Yetman is hopeful this "out of the ordinary" time might become less extraordinary for his home town.

"To have the ability to create an influx of people from a long way away, we've never really had that ability before — like people that have never been here," he said.

"These two things are certainly going to go a long way towards making that happen."

Topics: street-art, arts-and-entertainment, visual-art, music, rural, patchewollock-3491, brim-3391