Tuesday 1 January 2019. The Silo Art Trail links a series of mural-painted grain silos, some still operating, stretching 200 kilometres from Rupanyup to Patchewollock in Victoria’s Wimmera region in the state’s northwest. When the Handels were staying in Ararat at the beginning of 2019 we visited the silos at Rupanyup, Sheep Hills and Brim (where the project was conceived). The trail’s other painted silos are found at Lascelles, Rosebery and Patchewollock. The murals are quite spectacular – as are, surprisingly, the landscapes of the Wimmera, flat and dry and already shimmering in the day’s rising heat. After lunch at Warracknabeal we continued on to Little Desert National Park, a slice of arid scrub, desolate and beautiful and full of wildlife, that extends to the South Australian border. We walked the short Pomponderoo Hill Nature Walk, on the northeastern edge of the park near Dimboola. Despite the fierce heat and almost complete lack of shade, through sheer determination we managed to complete the walk.