A tiny sugar town devoid of art galleries and exhibitions is getting a colourful makeover one street at a time. In Lucinda, the humble power pole is a blank canvas for an artist who is immortalising local legends big and small.
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00:00 For David Rowe, this beaten up ute tray is a studio on wheels.
00:07 Each morning he picks a new roadside canvas in the sleepy seaside village of Lucinda.
00:14 It's really nice to get down here early in the morning and actually paint.
00:20 It's nice and no one's telling you what to do. I haven't got a boss. It's great.
00:25 The artist has been commissioned to beautify the sugar town by painting its power poles.
00:31 Yeah, yeah, you walk in, it's like the Louvre. Walk around amongst everybody and have a look at the pole.
00:36 Not quite like the Louvre, but anyway, just as important, but.
00:41 Twenty years after David Rowe first painted the poles, he's back to give his weathered masterpieces a refresh.
00:48 Some of them you could hardly see the picture and you were looking at them and they just looked horrid, you know.
00:54 They looked sad.
00:56 It's been yassy plus a few other cyclones, but the best part about it, none of them has been graffiti. Not one of them.
01:03 The theme is fishing with a few local identities in the mix.
01:07 One is Walter Putzker, a mackerel fisherman who died of cancer this year.
01:12 His wife says a tribute outside the family home keeps his memory alive.
01:17 In 20 years time, if we look after it, he'll still be here looking like this and I think that's fantastic.
01:25 Painting by the roadside means David often has to put his brushes down for a chat.
01:30 It's funny, you paint away and someone turns up, a little old lady turns up and she decides to tell you all her problems and you say, yes love, yes love.
01:40 It's a nice community down here.
01:43 A community reflected in its unusual works of art.
01:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]