Like so many other country towns, Kapunda – 90 kilometres or so north of Adelaide in South Australia – has had its challenges in recent years.
However, back in 2015 – against the backdrop of multiple empty shops in the main street – the community cooked up a plan to create ‘a town of murals’.
Now, Kapunda is a magnet for grey nomads and other visitors, and the ever-growing collection of street murals are receiving national acclaim.
Maxine Donald, the chairperson of the Kapunda Community Gallery & Kapunda Mural Town Project, said it was a town with a rich history and ‘walls crying out for decoration’ … and the impact was immediate.
Volunteers created Kapunda’s Post Office mural. PIC: Kapunda Community Gallery & Kapunda Mural Town Project
“The town embraced the project, spurred on by the increasing influx of tourists that it was eliciting, new businesses coming into vacant shops, and the general beautification of the town,” she said. “Morale was increasing.”
By the end of last year, 14 murals had been completed in and adjacent to Main Street using various materials, with some on panels and some directly onto walls – but all relevant to an aspect of Kapunda.
The town has now just learned that two of its murals have been named as finalists in the prestigious Australian Street Art Awards.
The first is a giant mural created by volunteers on aluminium panels and erected on the Kapunda Post Office showing the original PO building and a popular, recently retired postman on a bicycle.
The second is the ‘Town History Mural’ depicting elements of Kapunda’s history, from the original indigenous inhabitants through to the streetscape and Celtic Festival parades of the late 1990s.
Meanwhile, Ms Donald says two more murals are nearing completion, and the decoration of the Main Street Planter Boxes is in progress.
“It is an ongoing project, with no end in sight!” she told the Grey Nomads. “The greatest joy is in seeing visitors to our town immersed in its history and colour through our murals.”
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Great to see all that old stuff depicted in the murals.
Looking at them makes you realise how old you really are & how little time you have left.