SAM - A world class facility

By Belligerent Bruce

Mar 10, 2022

Peaceful: Lin Onus’s *The Land Within* painting of Barmah forest on display at SAM. Photo: Contributed.

Ernesto finally got himself organised and visited Shepparton Art Museum with friends from Gippsland on Tuesday.

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He had been told the exhibition of works by Australian artist Lin Onus was stunning but was unprepared for just how good.

Ernesto asked himself, what took you so long?

Worries about the new omicron variant of COVID-19 along with a few trips intra and interstate and other general holiday-type activities saw the time fly by.

The tendency to take your own backyard for granted meant all of a sudden the Lin Onus exhibition was finishing without Ernesto even seeing it.

Firstly the whole facility of SAM is stunning, with fabulous views over Victoria Park Lake, the red gum forest and the Strathbogie Ranges.

The internal spaces are well thought out and SAM will only improve when they get their act together with the café and rooftop bar.

As for the exhibits, the wall of paintings from the Hermannsburg School, featuring many paintings from Albert Namatjira and his family, was excellent and the Lin Onus collection was superb.

Do yourself a favour and see it before it closes this Sunday. You don’t have to be ‘arty-farty’ to appreciate works of this quality.

Ernesto fails to understand why there is so much negativity (mostly from people who haven’t even seen it) about this facility. Along with the Museum of Vehicle Evolution, SAM is a first class tourist attraction that will bring people from all over Australia to this region.

So just to throw a curve ball at you, why don’t we build a railway platform at SAM and at the ‘Super School’.

You could run a (electric) light rail carriage or two from Mooroopna to the school (picking up students at the SAM platform along the way), thus reducing the number of buses clogging up Hawdon and surrounding streets along with the resultant reduction in diesel pollution.

The Melbourne train could also stop at the SAM platform making it easy for tourists to visit the museum and enjoy the other facilities Shepparton has to offer.