DESIGNED as a drawcard for regional travellers, Collie's Mural Trail is already putting Collie on the map as a tourist destination, with the town's visitor's centre experiencing a surge in numbers since the installation of the murals.
Set to be officially opened this month, the Collie Mural Trail is part of a State government campaign that was developed to diversify the town's local economy.
The project has two components; 16 murals painted on walls throughout the town and then the centrepiece - the Wellington Dam 8000 square metre mega mural.
Building on the silo art movement happening all around Australia and internationally, now completed, the Wellington Dam mural is the biggest dam mural in the world.
Collie Mural Trail project director Travis Robinson said the location for the centrepiece was chosen due to the Wellington Dam's historical significance to the town as well as its sheer size.
Construction of the Wellington Dam began in 1932 and was completed in 1934, with the project used as a way to provide locals with work during the Great Depression.
Originally designed to provide water to the South West, when the dam's salt levels became too high in the early 1990s it was instead employed for irrigation and industrial purposes.
Australian artist Guido van Helten, who was selected to paint the Wellington Dam wall, provided the concept of using old archival photographs, sourcing photos from the State Library of Western Australia and Coalfield Museum (Collie) to superimpose onto the dam wall.
But before creating the artwork, Mr van Helten told the Collie Mural Trail project team that he would need to spend some time in Collie and talk to locals in order to gain a better understanding of the town and create something that truly reflected the community.
"In a ballsy move, Guido was the only artist that came back and said without meeting the local community, without hearing their stories, without seeing the sites, without engaging with them directly, I can't give you an image," Mr Robinson said.
"And that's been a vital element of this project - the artists engaging with the local community so that the paintings truly represent the town."
Receiving 47 submissions from both Australian and international artists, an important component in selecting the artists was ensuring they had sufficient experience to be able to deliver large scale art.
"That was significant - not just from an artistic perspective but from a technical perspective, as there is a high level of difficulty with large scale murals," Mr Robinson said.
The most monumental task, of course, was the Wellington Dam mural, for which a custom 9.5 metre swing stage had to be made, with scaffolders dismantling the stage and moving it along the wall as Mr van Helten completed each section.
To help translate his design from concept to a scaled mega-mural, Mr van Helten had his concept drawn and mapped onto a grid.
"Just being able to achieve the scale of the dam mural was a feat in itself," Mr Robinson said.
"How do you take an A4 piece of paper and transpose that onto a wall that is 20 metres long?
"The work that Guido has done in the past is spectacular and what he's created on the wall is just breathtaking."
Mr van Helten engaged a few local artists to help him install the large scale mural - a once in a lifetime opportunity for most, while 15 Western Australian artists and one interstate artist were selected to paint the town murals.
All of the mural designs revolve around at least one of three themes, as voted by the local community; the history of Collie, Aboriginal culture and the natural environment - with some of the murals multi-themed.
When 12 of the town's murals were installed in the week from November 23 to 28, a range of activities and engagement programs were put on for the artists and local community, including free walking tours for local primary school students and the general public.
"The visitors centre actually recorded a doubling of visitations during that week compared to the previous week," Mr Robinson said.
"And the town has seen a steady increase in visitors ever since."
With the Shire of Collie using Lotterywest funding to complete additional murals throughout the town, the Collie Mural Trail incorporates 35 murals in total, all of which will be documented on the Collie Mural Trail Map.
Plaques are set to be installed next to each mural and, at the time of writing, an app was being developed to further enhance each visitor's experience.
"There will be QR codes next to the murals which you can scan with the app to hear interviews with the respective artists where they explain their mural," Mr Robinson said.
Mr Robinson said there had already been some discussion with tourism providers in town who were keen to capitalise on the new attraction.
With the whole town getting behind the project, he said the most satisfying responses had been from the local community and general public.
"Collie is probably not known as an arts centre of the State, so to see that change in sentiment has been amazing," Mr Robinson said.
One mural which has particularly resonated with people is the painting on the town's RSL wall by South West artist Jacob 'Shakey' Butler.
The mural depicts real life soldiers from Collie who served in various wars, from WWI and finishing with the Vietnam war.
A sacred wall for the local community, Mr Butler said he had to be quite delicate with the whole process.
"The first thing I did was research all of the different RSL artwork based on the theme of war and it struck me that all of the artwork was quite depressing and similar to one another," Mr Butler said.
"There were lots of poppies, explosions and silhouettes of soldiers - so straight away I decided I wanted to concentrate on creating something a bit more uplifting and instead focus on the camaraderie and mateship of the soldiers."
After discussing a few concepts with the Collie RSL president and secretary, it was agreed the mural would be centred around soldiers playing a game of two-up and that the mural would feature real life soldiers from Collie that had served in various wars.
Provided a description of each soldier featured, where they served, their name and a passport sized photo of them, Mr Butler went about researching the different wars and sifting through historical photos to identify the uniforms worn and make the mural as accurate as possible.
"They invited me into the RSL where they had real ammo crates from WWII which I photographed, boots and drink canisters and so on - so everything that I put in that mural was either from a reference photo or a real life historical photo," Mr Butler said.
"The main character in the mural flipping the coin in two-up - we actually photographed him in the yard about 20 times and then I used those photos to create the painting of him.
"I used real life models, different photos to get proportions, a lot of Photoshop and the whole thing was painted using aerosol and paint brushes."
While painting the mural Mr Butler said he was approached several times by various family members of the soldiers depicted on the wall.
"I had the brother of one of the soldiers come and see the mural, and he was moved to tears as the only memory he had of him was a passport sized photo of him," Mr Butler said.
"So the mural has already garnered some really strong emotional reactions from members of the public."
Given the serious nature of the mural and the small amount of time allocated to complete the project, Mr Butler said he painted for about 15 hours each day.
"I was like a robot because I knew that every paint stroke meant something," Mr Butler said.
Due to the positive response to the mural Mr Butler was commissioned to do another mural for the trail, based on the underground coal miners in Collie.
"The mural will be a tribute to the underground coal miners that basically put Collie on the map by providing energy to WA," Mr Butler said.
"It is something that wasn't shown in the trail already, and I think the organisers could obviously see that I cared about the stories of the people that are represented on the wall so they know I will show the same respect to the coal miners," Mr Butler said.
"My goal with my art has always been to create something that somebody is going to have a strong emotional reaction to and that has a bit of a human connection."
The State government has invested $1.5 million in the Collie Mural Trail project, while the neighbouring kiosk at Wellington Dam also received $100,000 to expand its café overlooking the dam to accommodate growing tourist numbers.
When visiting the Collie Mural Trail be sure to leave at least half a day to explore Wellington Dam and Collie's town centre.
