General News
28 January, 2026
New mural unveiled
COBDEN Primary School unveiled a mural representing the journey through school towards the end of last year, celebrating the hard work of 11 students who were chosen to take part in its creation.
With the help of prolific Warrnambool Indigenous artist Sherry Johnstone, the Year Four to Year Six students, chosen as a representative of the school, worked on the mural from May 2025 until it was completed in December 2025.
Cobden Primary School art teacher Megan Mackinnon said the school received funding from Brophy Family and Youth Services to create a mural across a space they always thought would benefit from the painting of a mural.
“The art room, is a space you can see from the road and everywhere in the school,” she said.
“We always thought it was a really good spot to have a mural.
“We got funding for 11 students to work with an Indigenous artist, Sherry Johnstone, to work fortnightly on a big mural to represent the school.
“Her work has a lot of symbolism and messages behind it.
“It’s been really interesting and she’s been really great at teaching the kids to have meaning behind their art.”
Mrs Mackinnon said she originally thought Mrs Johnstone would be the driving force of creating the mural with some input from the students, but was pleasantly surprised when the students had more of an active role in the process.
“She got the students to first of all sketch whatever they could think of, any ideas, what they wanted to represent, what they wanted everyone to know about the school and the area,” she said.
“Most of them had drawn, interestingly, some sort of journey line, like a line through from the start to the end of school.
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“What we ended up doing was working out each student in pairs to have a section each with a year level for each section.
“It was all the students, it was amazing – Sherry definitely helped them to work out the symbolism and how to draw what they were thinking but they came up with all the ideas and all the sketches on their own.”
The mural was first sketched onto A3 sheets of paper before it was painted onto large boards which were eventually installed on the wall outside the art room.
Mrs Mackinnon said the mural creation process has been of great benefit to the students who took part, boosting their confidence both in and outside the classroom.
“I think having this tight knit group meet every fortnight – a lot of those students don’t get that kind of interaction with a teacher or mentor like Sherry,” she said.
“The biggest thing has been their confidence improving – a lot of them may have been quieter students and they just needed that little boost and it’s completely changed their school outcome and personalities.
“It has boosted their attendance which is incredible as well.
“There’s a few students we’re hoping will be able to create a career out of it – that’s sort of how incredible the work has been and the talent shown.
“I do see it in art but not to this level, it’s on another level of work that you don’t get to see in the art room.”
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