People are proud of how Thorough_Fare looks, next to the Shoalhaven City Arts Centre. With its bright green turf, colourful art-covered walls, bright yellow piano and little library.

We are also experiencing a fundamental shift in how local’s view the way we treat our town too. 

Not only are people speaking with pride about how the town’s artworks and face-lifts look, they are voicing their pleasant surprise at how little it has been vandalised.

Yes there has been the odd vandal attack, but considering the amount of new work and art and its vulnerability, I think many Shoalhaven residents are surprised to learn the old ‘oh that won’t last long in Nowra’ no longer applies.

Having grown up here I proudly point out to visiting family and friends our latest murals and improvements.

Hot on the heels of last year’s giant-sized aerosol art installment of a fisherman mending a net on the back wall of the former Betta Electrical building, we have another mammoth mural taking shape on the back wall of the Shoalhaven City Library. 

On both occasions the artists were world-renowned in their field. They worked hard to create works with an obvious connection to the Shoalhaven. Artist Matt Adnate’s work on the library represents the Indigenous people of Australia, Nowra and its culture.

It took 20 litres of paint and 70 spray cans for the Melbourne artist to recreate the image of an Aboriginal boy. He said it was an honour to put his mark on the Shoalhaven.

“It’s cool with a project like this because I wasn’t dictated who I had to paint, so I picked the cream of the crop from thousands of my photos,” he said.

“This boy is anonymous because I don’t want it to be about the individual person.

“I want it to represent the indigenous community as a whole.”

Adnate’s portraiture is in high-demand around the world, just last week he was painting in Singapore and is off to Johannesburg in South Africa on Friday to spread his vision.