By Emily-Rose Toohey
The Tannymorel Grain Shed Mural’s official unveiling on Saturday was the culmination of a years-long project helmed by community members, but their work is not finished yet.
Owner of the grain shed and mural committee member Leanne Bell said talks about the project first started about two and a half years ago.
“My partner said to me one day, ‘a mural would look good on the shed’,” Leanne said.
“So we had a chat with a few local people and formed a committee.
“We tried a couple of times to get a grant for it and were knocked back twice.”
However, these setbacks back did not deter the group from committing to the project, and Leanne said they eventually discovered an option to apply for disaster recovery money.
“It all snowballed from there,” she said.
Overall, the mural cost $43,670 and Leanne said they received $30,000 through Southern Downs Regional Council’s (SDRC) Bushfire Recovery funding and $13,670 from Gambling Community Benefit funding.
However, the Tannymorel community also raised $17,000 on their own through raffles once a month and a music night, just to name a few fundraising efforts.
Leanne said down the track, the community were hoping to move the historical water tank from Warwick to Tannymorel, which some of the fundraising money would go towards.
“We’d like to put a concrete slab at end of the shed for the water tank, but the moving process will take lots of organising,” she said.
Furthermore, Leanne said another venture in the works included putting spotlights around the mural so it lit up at night.
“No one used to come by Tanny and we hope this will bring people to us,” Leanne said.
“The community’s been wonderfully helpful – we couldn’t have done it without their support.”
Malcolm and Kerry Nicholson of Nicholson Art company created the mural over four months and many hours, and were approached about the job last year.
“If we had good weather it wouldn’t have taken that long – maybe only two and a half months,” Kerry said.
Their sharp attention to detail shaped the mural into what it became, and Leanne said everyone in Tannymorel loved it.
“The community would come over and we’d stand and watch the artists doing their work,” she said.
