Centre Place in Melbourne Cafe for Mural Monday

 

From the narrow mouth of Centre Place, a mural leans outward as if curious about the street beyond, its colours catching the eye before the scent of coffee does. It is glimpsed rather than announced, half-hidden in the laneway’s shade, a reminder that in Melbourne, art rarely asks for attention—it simply waits to be discovered.

Centre Place is one of the city’s older pedestrian lanes, a slim passage running between Collins and Flinders Streets, layered with decades of reinvention. Once a service lane, it has become a vertical corridor of cafés, murals, stickers, and weathered signage, where walls are treated as communal notebooks. Every surface carries something: paint, paste, memory. The lane is narrow enough that voices and footsteps overlap, and the sky appears only as a thin ribbon above.

The coffee, as expected, is expensive, but it comes with theatre: baristas moving with practised confidence, cups placed down with ceremony, conversations drifting between tables barely an arm’s length apart. It is not merely a place to drink coffee, but to linger briefly within the choreography of the city. In Centre Place, even a mural seen from outside feels intentional, as though it has been positioned to reward those who pause, look sideways, and accept that in Melbourne, the smallest spaces often hold the most character.

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Brunswick Mural next to a carpark for Mural Monday

 

There is no name to it, only colour: a burst of pink and purple pressed hard against brick, an animated mushroom grinning as if it has sprouted overnight from the wall itself. Beside it runs a loose string of graffiti, hurried, layered, half-erased, like a conversation that never intended to last. The mural does not ask for permanence. It announces presence, now.

Brunswick has always understood this language. Once a place of factories, foundries, and migrant households stitched together by long shifts and shared fences, it learned early how to absorb new voices without fully surrendering the old. Greek, Italian, Lebanese, Turkish—each wave left behind traces in shopfronts, bakeries, and the cadence of the streets. The walls, too, learned to listen.

In recent years, the palette has shifted. Warehouses became apartments, workshops turned into studios, and footpaths filled with prams where trolleys once rattled. Cafés replaced milk bars, and rent rose with quiet efficiency. The art followed suit—not commemorative, not reverent, but playful, ironic, deliberately temporary. The mushroom, cartoonish and bright, feels like a symbol of this phase of Brunswick: whimsical, expressive, slightly absurd, growing wherever there is just enough space to take root.

Yet the graffiti beside it resists polish. It scratches back, reminds the wall of its earlier lives. Together, mural and scrawl hold the suburb in tension—between heritage and reinvention, between those who arrived with nothing and those who arrive with choice. Brunswick does not resolve this tension; it wears it openly.

The colours will fade. Another layer will come. Someone else will repaint the story. But for now, the wall stands as Brunswick often does—unfinished, loud, contradictory, and alive to the steady churn of people who keep reshaping it, one mark at a time.

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Rupanyup Silo Art Vic Australia for Mural Monday

 

Rupanyup occupies a pivotal place on the Victorian Silo Art Trail, not only geographically but historically. Its silo artwork is among the earliest completed works on the trail and set a benchmark for how silo art could function as both public art and historical record within the Wimmera–Mallee landscape.

Location and context

The silos stand immediately adjacent to the Rupanyup railway line, a reminder of the town’s origins as a grain-handling and transport hub. Like many Wimmera towns, Rupanyup developed around wheat production, rail logistics, and seasonal labour. The silos, once purely utilitarian, now operate as a vertical canvas visible from kilometres away across the flat, open plains.

Artist and completion

The Rupanyup silos were painted in 2017 by Melbourne-based artist SMUG (Sam Bates), one of Australia’s most technically accomplished photorealistic muralists. At the time, large-scale silo murals were still relatively experimental in Victoria. This project helped legitimise silo art as a serious cultural initiative rather than novelty infrastructure decoration.

Subject matter: two figures, one shared history

Unlike many silo artworks that focus solely on agricultural themes, Rupanyup’s silos present two deeply symbolic local figures, each occupying one silo face:

Uncle Badger Bates

One silo depicts Uncle Badger Bates, a respected Wergaia Elder and Law Man. His inclusion foregrounds the long Aboriginal custodianship of the land, extending tens of thousands of years prior to European settlement. The portrait is rendered with solemn dignity: weathered skin, steady gaze, and fine facial detail that conveys authority rather than sentimentality. His presence reframes the silos—from symbols of colonial agriculture into markers of much older cultural continuity.

Sister Ethel May

The adjoining silo portrays Sister Ethel May, a pioneering bush nurse who served the Rupanyup district in the early 20th century. At a time when medical care in rural Victoria was sparse and travel was arduous, bush nurses were often the sole providers of healthcare across vast distances. Her image represents endurance, service, and the quiet heroism of rural women. The juxtaposition with Uncle Badger Bates is deliberate: two lives shaped by the same land, contributing in different but equally foundational ways to the community.

Artistic style and execution

SMUG’s trademark hyperrealism is evident throughout the work. The scale is monumental, yet the detail is intimate—creases around eyes, subtle tonal variations in skin, and carefully controlled light that prevents distortion when viewed from ground level. The neutral, earthy palette harmonises with the surrounding wheat fields and big skies, ensuring the artwork feels embedded in place rather than imposed upon it.

Cultural significance

Rupanyup’s silo art is often described as one of the most socially thoughtful works on the Victorian Silo Art Trail. It avoids nostalgia and avoids abstraction, instead offering a quiet, balanced statement about shared history, recognition, and coexistence. Importantly, it acknowledges Aboriginal presence not as a preface to settlement, but as an ongoing reality.

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Leunig Mural in pink found in Brunswick Street Melbourne for Mural Monday

 

Michael Leunig, one of Australia’s most celebrated cartoonists and cultural commentators, passed away in December 2024 at the age of 79. Renowned for his whimsical line drawings and deeply reflective social commentary, Leunig’s work has touched generations of Australians through newspapers, galleries, and public exhibitions. Characters such as Mr Curly and the recurring symbolic ducks became emblematic of his gentle yet poignant worldview, combining humor, philosophy, and humanity in a distinctive style.

Traditionally rendered in black and white, Leunig’s illustrations have now found a renewed presence in Melbourne’s urban art scene. On Brunswick Street, long-standing merchants’ wall murals, once monochrome, have taken on vibrant hues under the guidance of Leunig’s daughter. These murals, painted in shades of pink, reinterpret the classic imagery and carry forward her father’s artistic vision, blending his legacy with contemporary street art.

Leunig’s daughter, an accomplished artist in her own right, has been actively involved in translating her father’s aesthetic into public spaces. Her work on the Brunswick Street murals demonstrates a fusion of familial heritage and urban creativity, preserving the spirit of Leunig’s illustrations while adding a fresh, colorful dimension to Melbourne’s streetscape.

Through these murals, the public continues to engage with the humor, insight, and tenderness that defined Michael Leunig’s career. His legacy endures not only on the page but in the vibrant canvas of the city itself, a living testament to the enduring power of art in everyday life.

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FE 20-70mm f4 G

Hosier Lane Murals Melb for Mural Monday

 

The lane narrows and breathes in blue, brick sweating history through layers of paint and intention. One wall holds a figure half-remembered, chalked in pale blues and bruised whites, a body leaning forward as if listening to the city through the masonry. It is not heroic, not monumental. It is tentative, almost apologetic, as though the mural knows it will be overwritten, flaked away, revised by another hand tomorrow. Graffiti cuts across its flank like a muttered aside, the city interrupting itself.

Across the lane, an eye watches. Large, unblinking, impossibly blue. It floats inside a rough black field, surrounded by drips, tags, stickers, and half-erased names. The eye does not judge; it simply observes. It has seen tourists pause, cameras lifted, and locals pass without looking up. It has seen rain turn pigment into rivulets and sun harden fresh paint into permanence that never truly lasts. Someone has scrawled over its face, someone else has added color at the edges, and still the eye remains, alert and calm amid the noise.

Hosier Lane is never finished. These murals speak to each other across the narrow stone corridor: the fragile human form and the enduring gaze, the body that fades and the eye that remembers. Strange, yes, but honest. They accept interruption. They accept decay. They accept that meaning here is provisional, layered, and communal.

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Byron Bay Mural for Mural Monday

 

This mural, found on a brick wall in Byron Bay, NSW, is a striking example of the town’s long-standing embrace of street art as public storytelling. Painted directly onto the rough masonry, the work uses the texture of the bricks to animate the figure, allowing the seams and mortar lines to become part of the visual rhythm rather than an obstruction.

The central figure is a mythic, warrior-like woman, rendered with a contemporary, comic-inflected realism. Her gaze is direct and unwavering, framed by flowing hair and a crown that evokes classical iconography while remaining firmly modern. The palette is dominated by deep blues, aquas, and teals, suggesting oceanic movement and Byron Bay’s coastal identity, while warmer golds and flesh tones anchor the figure in human presence. The sense of motion—hair streaming, fabric and energy swirling around her—gives the mural a cinematic dynamism, as though the figure is emerging from water or storm.

At the lower right, the mural is signed, indicating authorship by a street artist active in the region. While Byron Bay hosts works by many visiting and local muralists, this piece reflects a style often seen in contemporary Australian street art: technically polished, mythologically referential, and consciously empowering in its portrayal of feminine strength.

Placed in Byron Bay’s urban fabric, the mural operates as more than decoration. It functions as a visual assertion of identity—creative, defiant, and imaginative—mirroring the town’s reputation as a place where art, individuality, and landscape intersect.

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Hosier Lane Mural for Mural Monday

 

Amid the narrow, paint-splashed alleyways of Hosier Lane, where layers of graffiti speak of decades of fleeting art and rebellious voices, I stumbled upon one mural that lingered in my mind. An ape, rendered with an innocence that seemed almost human, gazed softly from its wall, framed by a swirl of deep purples that bled into the brickwork. In this city alley where murals rise and fall with the whims of artists and time, this quiet creature held its ground—a peculiar presence in the ever-changing canvas of Hosier Lane. Here, every wall tells a story, every spray of color a fragment of Melbourne’s urban heartbeat, yet this gentle, purple-hued ape felt timeless, a secret whisper amid the riot of street expression.

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St Arnaud's silo art for Mural Monday

 

The mural is a recent addition to the evolving cultural tapestry of St Arnaud in regional Victoria, yet it already feels deeply rooted in the town’s identity. Like many of the artworks that grace its walls, it draws inspiration from the real people who shaped this place—its miners and pastoralists, its shopkeepers and shearers, its community elders whose stories linger in the main street as surely as their footsteps once did. Each face rendered in paint carries a quiet depth: a furrow that speaks of drought years endured, an uplifted gaze recalling moments of unexpected triumph, a stance that hints at the unrecorded, everyday heroism of country life. These murals are not mere decoration; they are a visual archive, a testament to resilience, memory and belonging.

As I pause before the artwork, I am struck by how its layered colours evoke emotion with surprising clarity—how a single expression can summon both pride and longing, how the careful shading brings a whole life into view. Today, though, contemplation must yield to the frenetic rhythm ahead. The workday promises to be relentless; the “silly season” has begun in earnest, that annual stretch when tempers fray and patience thins, and people seem to vibrate with a restlessness all their own. Yet even as the day threatens its usual chaos, the mural’s quiet dignity lingers with me—a reminder of the steadiness that built this town, and of the human stories that stand firm beneath the rush of passing days.

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Gin distillery in Sorrento Mornington Peninsula for Mural Monday

 

A few months ago, Joel and I visited a small gin distillery, its car park walls enlivened by whimsical cartoons that caught the eye before one even reached the doorway. I took those photographs almost instinctively—quick reflexes, a moment of colour and charm preserved without a second thought—only to let them slip into the quiet darkness of my hard drive, forgotten until now.

In the time since that visit, life unfolded in its own peculiar symmetry. I was found to have hypothyroidism; Joel, soon after, was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. It seems we are friends bound not only by shared history but by parallel passages through unexpected chapters of health—an odd, intimate echo of each other’s burdens.

The distillery itself stood as a testament to the gentle renaissance of the gin industry on the Mornington Peninsula, particularly around Sorrento. What began as a modest coastal curiosity has grown into a craft movement rooted in the region’s crisp maritime air, its wild botanicals, and the quiet patience of makers who treat distillation as both science and art. Sorrento’s small-batch producers draw inspiration from the Peninsula’s salt-breeze gardens, native herbs, and citrus groves, capturing the landscape in each aromatic bottle. Their gins speak of limestone cliffs, shifting tides, and the bright, wind-swept mornings of the coast.

Remembering that day now—the murals, the subtle hum of copper stills, the clean bite of botanicals on the palate—feels like returning to a place where craft, companionship, and circumstance briefly converged. In those moments, before diagnoses and the weight of the months that followed, the world tasted simple, fragrant, and clear.

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Fairfield Bridge Mural for Mural Monday

 

Joel and I havent ventured into mural hunting for some time. This one was a lady portrait and the artist unknown. The place smells quite bad too. But it would be a good location for abstract and geometrical photography

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Laowa 9mm f5.6

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Wulai creek fruit mural, Taipei for Mural Monday

 

Last week, I wrote about the Wulai Creek region in Taipei. Recently, I came across a mural there depicting an assortment of fruits. The entire artwork has fallen into decay, its surface mottled with mould and weathered by time. Yet, in its deterioration, I found it hauntingly unique and strangely beautiful.

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Monkey Magic Mural for Mural Monday

 

I recall a mural once painted upon the wall of an abandoned factory in North Richmond. At that time, the television series then airing on the ABC was immensely popular, and the mural seemed almost a reflection of that cultural moment. How changed the area is now. The neighbourhood has fallen into neglect and disrepute, its streets shadowed by the presence of the state-sponsored heroin injection facility—an establishment most ill-advisedly situated beside a primary school. What was once a modest but spirited corner of Melbourne has been marred by this ill-conceived social experiment, leaving North Richmond diminished in both safety and dignity.

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Christchurch Mural in New Zealand for Mural Monday

 

The mural, an impressive and expansive work, first caught my attention when I visited Christchurch earlier this year for a conference. Revisiting the photograph now for Mural Monday, I am struck anew by its vibrancy and significance — a fine testament to the city’s enduring spirit and creative renewal in the years following the major earthquake.

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Fitzroy St Murals and Graffiti for Mural Monday

 

It has been quite some time since I last took a leisurely stroll through Fitzroy. Today, I managed to find a parking space in the car park depicted in the first image—a structure whose interior proves no less forbidding than its stark exterior. There is, however, a certain raw charm in its decay, a sense of urban history etched into the walls. Amid the gloom, a large mural—an expressive portrait splashed with bold strokes of colour—graces one of the concrete surfaces, lending the place an unexpected civility and artistic spirit so characteristic of Fitzroy’s creative soul.

Nearby, a vivid depiction of Sonic the Hedgehog caught my eye—a playful echo from the 1990s that stirred a quiet nostalgia. Its bright hues and carefree energy stood in delightful contrast to the rough textures of the surrounding walls, as though childhood memory itself had been painted onto the heart of the city’s grit.

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Hosier Lane Mural Melbourne for Mural Monday

 

For a brief span of time, a mural appeared upon the walls of Hosier Lane, its authorship unknown to me. Remarkably, it remained unmarked by graffiti or the careless hand of tagging. The work bore a comical air: it depicted an office worker suspended upside down, his tie caught and twisted about a pole, as though the trappings of his profession had ensnared him in an absurd fate

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Byaduk Cave Silo Art, Budj Bim for Mural Monday

 

Last year, whilst engaged in employment near Warrnambool Hospital, I took the opportunity upon a quiet weekend to journey into the surrounding districts in search of fresh air and a measure of repose. My travels carried me towards the charming township of Byaduk, a settlement of modest size yet notable for its enduring ties to the land and its recent contributions to the celebrated movement of Australian silo art.

The silos of Byaduk, once plain and utilitarian structures of rural industry, now stand transformed into monumental canvases that honour both the natural world and the heritage of the region. Painted under the hand of contemporary artists, they breathe new life into these sentinels of the wheat trade, which in earlier decades symbolised the prosperity of Victorian farming communities. Today they form part of the larger Australian Silo Art Trail, a cultural endeavour that has swept across the nation, turning the functional relics of agriculture into enduring public galleries beneath the open sky.

In beholding these works at Byaduk, one perceives not merely colour upon concrete but the meeting of past and present—an echo of toil upon the land now reimagined as a celebration of beauty and memory, binding the township more deeply to both its own history and the broader story of rural Victoria.

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Fitzroy Murals in Melbourne for Monday Mural

 

I am not sure whom drew these murals. A little punk and sassy. 

Last weekend, we did not venture a coast again. The weather turned sour and high tide at the sea. So we just visited a cafe instead. 

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FE 35mm f1.4 GM

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Hosier Lane mural by Superb_Beefalo

 

I was unable to discover much information about the artist. Nevertheless, the work does not appear to be left unsigned. It is a colourful composition, depicting a green dinosaur adorned with a crown, set against a vividly psychedelic background.

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Lonsdale St Murals for Mural Monday

 

One evening, during an outing, Joel escorted me to a Korean restaurant. At its entrance, and upon the façades of the neighbouring shops, there were displayed murals of considerable charm.

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Duckboard place mural Melbourne for Mural Monday

 

This mural in Duckboard Place, Melbourne, is the work of Steph Mann, who signs her pieces as @stephmann_artist. It is a striking, dreamlike painting that blends surrealism with whimsical natural motifs.

The piece depicts a fawn-like creature with elongated legs, blending seamlessly with tall mushroom stems that appear to grow into and through its body. The creature turns its head gracefully toward a glowing butterfly perched above its back, suggesting a moment of quiet wonder. The background is layered in vivid blues and purples, transitioning into deep magentas and reds on the ground, evoking an otherworldly twilight or dreamscape.

Steph Mann’s work often explores the fantastical and surreal, transforming familiar animals and natural forms into beings that seem to live in a liminal space between dream and reality. The surreal elongation of limbs and the fusion of plant life with animal life suggest a meditation on interconnectedness, transformation, and the strangeness of the natural world when seen through an imaginative lens.

Duckboard Place, adjacent to the more famous Hosier Lane, is one of Melbourne’s renowned street art precincts. It provides a platform for both established and emerging artists to create large-scale murals that merge fine art with urban expression. Mann’s mural contributes to this vibrant gallery of the streets, offering passersby an invitation to pause, reflect, and immerse themselves in a fantastical vision that lingers long after one has walked past.

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