A large goanna stands in front of me, its forked tongue extending from between its lips. I freeze for a second... then remember it too is frozen. Permanently.
It wouldn't be strange to see a goanna here among the dry grass and arching eucalyptus of the NSW Central West, but this one is different. Twenty metres long, made of woven steel, it's a glinting metallic sculpture among the softness of the trees and morning light.
I have the goanna all to myself for a while, before a woman from nearby Forbes arrives to walk her small fluffy dog along the shore of the adjacent mirror-like swamp. She tells me about the new bird hides here, about a great roadside stall selling cherries around the corner, and gives me some tips for other sculptures to see nearby. We chat a bit then wave goodbye. She shouts after me, as her dog trots away down the path, "Don't forget the cherries."
I do. Forget about the cherries, I mean. I'm too busy mulling over what she's told me about the artworks. After all, they're the whole reason I've come here - to see Sculpture Down the Lachlan, a regional NSW answer to Bondi's annual Sculpture by the Sea.
Their story starts in Forbes, about five kilometres away. With a population of only about 6000 people, it's a small town, the kind of place brochures and lazy travel writers would call "charming". The centre bursts with grand heritage buildings (so much so that The Dish was filmed here instead of Parkes because it looked more ye olde) but when I try to visit the Forbes Museum, I discover it closed, open only two hours a day, just its metal sign creaking in the wind.
This is bushranger territory and the local cemetery has the grave of Ben Hall just metres away from the grave of Ned Kelly's sister, Kate Foster. The Lachlan River snakes around the southern part of town, while parklands surround the gorgeous Lake Forbes. "It's an oasis for people, particularly during dry times," Nina Hooper at the visitor centre tells me.
An oasis for the region, sure, but not enough for road-trippers to stop, even though it's on the main highway between Melbourne and Queensland. And even though it's often dry times here. To try to change this, the local arts society first launched an annual sculpture competition to fill the town's streets - hence the bronze life-sized dog known as Leroy cocking his leg against a pole. And the bronze pyramid of three naked human bodies (bits and all) with animal heads - which has proved quite controversial in a traditional country town. "We've even got letters from the bishop saying we're corrupting the youth of the town," Nina tells me.
But then, to truly carve out its place, Forbes launched its epic 100-kilometre-long sculpture trail, which was only completed about a year ago. Stopping at the 12-kilometre mark and pulling over to a red sculpture spelling the word "amazing" in lowercase, I can spot some evidence of the trail's evolution (and shoestring budget). The "a" was sculpted in 2014, more than three years before local farmers had the money and time to weld together the rest of the letters. Look closely, and you'll see it's more faded than the "mazing".
Twelve other enormous artworks feature along the sculpture trail, each by a different artist commissioned by the Forbes Art Society. When I caught up with the society's Keith Mullette before setting off, he explained how they chose artists who would work with the diverse landscapes of the route's locations, how they wanted different styles and materials, but ultimately how "they all had to be giving you something to think about".
Now, staring at a Corten-steel bull with a girl playing a violin on its back, wondering what it means, I remember Keith's words. "It's like all art. The more you see it, the more you can find a reason for it." But was he talking about a deeper meaning in the works? Or about the success of the trail, which thousands of tourists now come to see?
Because many of those tourists now stay overnight in Forbes, like I did the night before - or, at least, about 20 kilometres outside Forbes, on a working cattle station. It's here that Kylie and Adrian Matthews created Top Paddock Silo Stay, by turning two old grain silos into boutique accommodation, putting bedrooms inside each and connecting them with a modern living area, the silos' corrugated-iron husks as curved feature walls.
When I arrive, I get a warm country greeting from two noisy goats (who settle down when they realise I won't feed them) and it doesn't take long for the ageing family dog, Ted, to meander over from the main house also looking for treats. He gets pats instead, as I sit on the terrace and watch the glowing sunset over the paddocks, the colour of ignited indigo a warning of the dry day tomorrow that will be hot enough to close the region's one-room rural schoolhouses, while I hit the road with the air-con.
'The bush hath friends to meet him'
Currajong trees flash past in yellow fields, insects become smears on my windscreen, a sun-bleached sign advertises a $5 honesty box for a carton of eggs at the driveway to a farm. Driving from sculpture to sculpture, I am unwittingly following an old stock route which, itself unwittingly, is following an ancient Wiradjuri songline. Stories have been told along this trail for centuries, maybe millennia, and these huge artworks are just the latest iteration. Like a man perched atop an 11-metre-high wooden water tower, representing our need to control resources. Or a six-metre-long hand of stainless steel chain holding a bird, offering a visual homily about protecting the environment.
The name of the trail, Sculpture Down the Lachlan, is a reference to Banjo Paterson's Clancy of the Overflow, a poem comparing the romanticism of roaming the country to the restraints of city life. "The bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him, in the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars," one of my favourite lines reads. I'm no more Clancy than I am Banjo, but I think I'm hearing whispers in the rustling of the river red gums whenever I stop. And I certainly meet new friends.
"We're not usually highway people but the girl at the motel told us about the sculptures this morning," flow the kindly voices of the four retirees who apparently have as much time for a road-trip detour as they have for a long conversation with a stranger. They're very pleased they've come to see the artworks, they tell me, so I ask for their favourites so far. "I like the bull," says one lady. "I like the brumbies," says another, talking about the final piece that was installed, four life-sized wild horses that, although cast in bronze, have immense freedom and spirit in their taut muscles and flaring nostrils.
We've crossed paths at a sculpture that I'm just leaving. "Perhaps this one will be a contender for your favourite," I proffer. Because I think it's mine. Called Heart of Country, it's an imposing steel figure of a Wiradjuri warrior, proud and six metres tall, spear in one hand, staring along the songline as though surveying the land. Much of that land has been taken from him, represented by the sections of missing body where just metal rods remain. But at his heart, literally where his heart would be, is a collection of stones taken from the hill behind him, from and of his country.
They're moving, some of these sculptures. But not moveable. I recall Nina at the visitor centre telling me "they have to be resistant to being knocked over by cows", as though that's normal out here. But when I bump into the retirees one more time, at the next artwork, it turns out their favourites haven't changed - and probably won't. We're now just 12 kilometres from Condobolin and, after one final gorgeous artwork of billowing metal, it's all over. Almost. Because there's one last surprise.
Ute-opia in a paddock
Condobolin is about half the size of Forbes and, in case you forgot it's rural, has a sign reading "wait here if horses on bridge" as the road into town crosses the Lachlan River. But just before the bridge, I pull into the main attraction in Condo (as everyone calls it), the town's very own sculpture garden - where every artwork is made from a ute! Car blimey!
About 20 Holden utes, now all lined up in a paddock, were donated by local residents and each given to an outback artist to transform with the theme, "What is Australian?". Some used the vehicles as canvases for paintings of emus, racehorses, Vegemite. Some created more sculptural artworks, like the rusted kangaroo-esque monster called UteZilla. Local artist Karen Booth, who pops out to meet me at the gallery, put the ute upright and built an outhouse in the tray with a painting of Dame Edna Everage on the dunny. "It became an icon in an icon on an icon," she laughs as she points it out.
There's even a ute painted as a Bundaberg Rum bottle, threatening to tip over, with a bushman holding it up. Clancy Stops the Overflow, it's called. Would Banjo Paterson appreciate the joke? If the poem's anything to go by, he'd certainly appreciate the whimsical freedom in these art pieces, just as I've appreciated the "vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended" on this meandering sculpture trail down the Lachlan. Where artworks talk to landscapes, where meaning's found in visions of our country, and cherries are still waiting at a roadside stall.
The writer was a guest of Central NSW Tourism