Mylinda Rogers is the scrap-metal-shiela and is an unqualified marketing genius, quite apart from her artistic ability with barbed wire and other scrap metal. And that is prodigious.

We followed her sculpture trail for 200km of mostly dirt roads for most of a day because the sculptures require you to get out and look at them.  Most have hilarious little details built into them which a casual look would miss – and which, sadly, a photo misses too.

Her initial idea was to keep the local school bus kids amused on their lengthy to-and-from school journeys.  A few people let her place a few of her sculptures on the side of the road and an idea was born.  Over time she had added many more (over 40 now and still going…), creating the world’s longest sculpture trail (probably not a lot of competition?).  There’s no signage along the way or at each piece, but there is a brochure, with names, to help you find them. 

After amusing the school kids, she also recognised the opportunity to promote her art and to sell stuff.  Even more brilliantly, her website allows you to contact her about her art, to commission or buy a piece and most importantly, to give you some idea of cost.  If you’re after a barbed wire possum in a tree at your place, it’s important to know that it’s not going to cost 10 grand but it’s going to be more than 2 grand, thus dealing easily with tyre-kickers.

And if you were a local property owner, why wouldn’t you want your property sign to have that little something extra.  For instance, the guy at Clare Station has a business helicopter mustering – you can see the Robinson in has backyard from the roadway. (I agree – he should be out working!)

Over time, she has even been able to be more adventurous with the siting – the Returned Soldier sits somewhat forlornly on a cliff above the road.

Here’s a bunch more photos – we completely loved this trail. 👍👍

None of this can have hurt as she has plenty of commissions under her belt now, the biggest of which is the dinosaur in Muttaburra – we didn’t see it, but it’s huge and named Barb!  When Mylinda put her gloves on to wrap 3 kilometres of barbed wire around it, you can be sure she asked, “What could possibly go wrong?”