The strange "Murtoa" barn, the purpose of which is difficult to guess (10 photos + 1 video)

In the town of Murtoa, in the Wimmera region of Victoria, Australia, there is a large granary that resembles a large cathedral rather than the typical granary found in the rest of the country. Some call it the "Wimmera Cathedral" or the "Murtoa Stick Shed". The building is 265 metres long, 60 metres wide and almost 20 metres high.





The Stick Shed was built at the start of World War II to store grain that could not be exported. It was the first wheat storage facility built in Victoria and the only one of its kind still standing in Australia.



Murtoa Town

In the 1930s, the Australian wheat industry was producing 1,800,000 tonnes a year. About 1,150,000 of this was exported, mainly to Britain and Western Europe. By 1939, it was obvious that wheat exports could not continue and that the coming harvests would have to be stored throughout the war.





Murtoa Grain Storage

In 1939-40, Australia had an exceptionally good harvest, leading to increased grain stocks and a shortage of storage. This prompted the Australian Wheat Board to design and build the first large bulk storage facilities in Western Australia. Initially called "bulkheads", they later became known as emergency wheat storage sheds.



A total of 22 emergency depots were built - 18 in Western Australia and four in Victoria. Due to its location at a key transport hub for Victoria's wheat industry, Murtoa was chosen as one of the sites.



Murtoa Shed was built in four months between September 1941 and January 1942. Due to a shortage of steel, the barn was built primarily from readily available wood. 560 (56 rows of 10) untreated rowan posts were set into a foundation dug into the ground. Concrete was poured around the posts by hand.



To reduce the use of nails, galvanized iron was used in most structural connections. A 150-ton, 16,000-square-meter iron roof was installed over this wooden structure. The roof was pitched to mimic the angle at which a wheat pile naturally forms. The barn had a capacity of approximately 92,500 tons of wheat.



The grain was distributed by a system of mechanical elevators and conveyors, including a central conveyor running high up the center of the barn. The elevators delivered the wheat from the bins to the ridge level, where it was distributed by a conveyor down the length of the barn, forming a huge, single mound of grain. A conveyor at ground level returned the wheat to the elevator for further transport.



The Murtoa barn continued to store grain until it was closed in 1989 due to rising maintenance costs.



In 2014, the building was listed as a National Heritage Site, recognising it as "a significant part of Australia's history in the wheat industry".