Stawell 27 Oct 2012

Off to Stawell in the morning in the freezing cold – this trip has been one of extreme weather, from shorts to thick jumpers! Stawell (pronounced Stall) is set on a high ridge and like many towns around here owes its prosperity to the gold rushes and has many fine public buildings. Usually when we go into these little towns, we can bet the ugliest building will be the Commonwealth Bank. In the 1970’s Which Bank must have employed a builder to go around all the country towns in Australia to pull down the lovely Victorian bank buildings and erect dark brown monolith constructions that pay homage to the worst of Stalinist creations. However in Stawell, the council outdid the Commonwealth Bank! In the 1870’s they had erected a very attractive filigree decorated Town Hall, (minus a bell tower), so they decided to complete the building in 1939. Conversely instead of completing it in the same style, they decided to build it in an Art Deco style, imposing a severe angular construction on top of the delicate base, thus ruining the look of the entire building! After recovering from our tour of the town, we visited the local Ag Show, which was a lot of fun. Although small, it contained all the elements of the larger shows we had visited, with a good animal display, along with assorted arts, crafts and beautifully presented food. Two events we hadn’t seen before were the Sheaf Bag tossing and the Rock Drill competitions, which quickly separated the men from the boys. Drove to the edge of town and camped next to a peaceful lagoon for the night.