Stobie pole mosaics will brighten up this Murray Bridge neighbourhood
Inspired by Adelaide’s Bowden Bird Walk, artist Eileen Newbery and her friends hope to bring a splash of colour to their area.
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Eileen Newbery and her friends have a plan to brighten up their corner of Murray Bridge.
Over the coming months, she and a group of helpers will create five mosaics featuring birds, animals and plants.
The artworks will be attached to five Stobie poles on streets near Murray Bridge’s hospital roundabout: Mulgundawah Road, Verdun Road, Gray Street and Gladstone Street.
The artist said she had been inspired by a comparable project in Adelaide’s inner north-western suburbs: the Bowden Bird Walk, by volunteer arts group Hindmarsh Greening.
“They are amazing,” Ms Newbery said.
“We would like to do something similar.”
The Murray Bridge group isn’t quite so ambitious at this stage – the Bowden circuit features 30 mosaics completed over five years, after all – but they hope their works will have a similar impact on passers-by.
Ms Newbery, a former retailer, has spent the past 45 years teaching students of all ages how to make leadlights and mosaics.
Her students will have an opportunity to collaborate on the Stobie pole project, along with offsiders Leanne Pearson and Justin Richards.
Their first design, featuring a kookaburra and native blossoms, is already underway in Ms Newbery’s studio.
The others are also likely to feature native Australian plants and animals, although the group planned to ask residents and White Park users what they’d like to see on the poles, too – perhaps dogs to reflect the dog park, or agricultural imagery to fit the area’s distant past as Murray Bridge’s first showground.
They gained the approval of the city’s councillors a fortnight ago, and anticipated a green light from SA Power Networks in the near future.
All they need now is enough material to complete their mosaics.
Local businesses have already donated backing boards and paper; their greatest need is for colourful tiles.
“All those people who cleaned out their 1950s bathrooms, we need those tiles,” Mr Richards said with a grin.
In time, the artists hope others will be able to carry on their contribution to Murray Bridge’s artistic landscape by creating more Stobie pole artworks, adding to theirs and the ones already painted elsewhere in town.
“I’d like to see (a trail) going all the way up Verdun Road,” Mr Richards said.
“But I won’t be finishing that in my lifetime.”
The focus on Stobie pole artwork is timely – the South Australian icon turned 100 earlier this year.
An engineer named James Cyril Stobie patented his design for a steel-and-concrete telegraph post in July 1924.
Previously, the Adelaide Electric Supply Company had used wooden poles imported from interstate, but they were more susceptible to damage from fire or termites.
Mr Stobie could never have guessed his invention would one day become the canvas for an arts movement, but no doubt he wouldn’t have minded.
- Donate to or volunteer with the project: Call Eileen Newbery on 0427 326 605.
