Bush Legends: The perfectly ugly Balingup scarecrow everyone remembers

So ugly, yet so beautiful. Standing on the southern outskirts of Balingup, a veritable mangle of metal has been chosen by Bush Legends as WA’s most interesting and impacting town entry statement. From Shackleton’s tin man, Bruce Rock’s rock, Kukerin’s tangled postcode and Donnybrook’s big apples, to the clever ship art in Cervantes, Wickham’s big truck, Mullewa’s metal sunflowers and Dampier’s red dog, there are many and varied visual welcomes into the State’s country towns. But the female scarecrow erected in Balingup nearly three decades ago — and only now being named “Helen” to coincide with her moment in the Bush Legends sun — has a certain magic. And the woman who brought her to life has come clean on the quirks behind her construction. Wendy Gilham and her husband Harold were Bencubbin farmers before a shift to the city and then ultimately to Balingup in 1990 after Harold was diagnosed with lymphoma. He died in 1994, but she stayed for a decade and left a lasting legacy. Mrs Gilham became a member of the local Small Farm Field Day committee overseeing the building of the town’s iconic scarecrows by the men of the district, and was challenged to inspire a gender balance by fellow committee member Bob Bracey. “I asked why there weren’t any female scarecrows and Bob told me there wouldn’t be until I built one myself,” Mrs Gilham said. “He threw down the gauntlet.” She then engaged her friend Jan Rowe to join her for the project and they quickly got down and dirty in their tracksuits and kitchen gloves for the serious business of scarecrow construction. “We went all over the rubbish heaps finding all sorts of things,” Mrs Gilham said. “It took us ages and everything was covered in mud. It was filthy, dirty work but it was so much fun. We went looking for old car parts and stuff at the Balingup rubbish heap, which wasn’t very productive. Then we went to the Donnybrook rubbish heap, which was better. “We found some headlights, which we turned upside down and said, ‘Oh look, here’s some boobs.’ Then there was a piece of old car which we thought would make a good apron. “We went looking for the body, which we found from a part of another old car, but it took us ages to find a head. We just had to find a head. “We knew what she was going to look like and she was going to be really horrible.” Some more searching through the tips and the back of old car yards uncovered the rounded object they were craving and the pair then fashioned the striking facial features to attach to it. Each successful find would be taken back to Ms Rowe’s house and laid on the ground in place, allowing the scarecrow to gradually take form. “We ended up using steel posts for her legs because we couldn’t get anything else solid enough,” Mrs Gilham said. “We had to put them up her backside so she didn’t fall over.” One of the biggest tasks the duo faced was finding someone in town who was not involved in building any of the other scarecrows so could help bring their secretive mission together. An initial approach to one “grumpy” man to weld the pieces together was met with indifference to say the least after he looked at all the raw pieces in the back of a ute. “He was rude and reluctant, but his wife had a quiet word in his ear to tell him he was doing it for the girls,” Mrs Gilham said. “He couldn’t believe what we were doing and was just like, ‘Are you for real?’” There were also car springs used for arms and hands, but a photograph of the two proud builders taken immediately after the scarecrow had been erected shows some items that are now missing. A piece from an old saw, which became the hair, a hat, a tin version of the Golden Wattle Cookery Book from one hand and a cake tin and tray from the other have been stolen over the years. In fact, she may have well been gone completely if those steel poles had not been planted into concrete by the six men required to lift the hulking frame into place. But it is the tinkering with her art after she had left town and without her approval — a sin of the highest order in the artistic world — that still has Ms Gilham simmering. She once made a random return to the town with her son Stephen, who was treasure hunting via Geocaching Australia and found an item was at his mother’s creation. She was shocked with what she saw, with some additions added for modesty amid some extra painted colour. “I couldn’t believe it and I thought, ‘That’s not my scarecrow’,” she said. “I found out some guy had turned up with his two wives and a bus full of kids and took it upon himself without telling anyone to paint all the scarecrows. He also wanted to cover mine up and he put a bodice thing over her boobs and a skirt on her. “I was devastated because we’d put a lot of work into that bird and making her as ugly as possible.” Helen Christensen, a former local councillor, was a great supporter of Mrs Gilham’s work to the point where she once saved it by demanding it be reinstalled after it had been bulldozed into a roadside gutter during road works. “She said, ‘It’s the worst scarecrow I’ve ever seen in my life, but well done girls’,” laughed Mrs Gilham, who has now vowed to now call her scarecrow “Helen” in honour of the long-time champion of Balingup. “Helen is Balingup,” Mrs Gilham said. “She cares about Balingup and she will work hard to make sure everything goes properly and it’s done properly.” Mrs Christensen was not overly enraptured with the naming honour, but said the scarecrow was representative of the town’s ideology. “The scarecrow and the Small Farm Field Day say everything about Balingup in that we just do things for ourselves,” she said. “Balingup is a very friendly town and if you come to live here, you soon fit in. There are lots of things to join, people will invite you to something and you can see what it is that suits you without any pressure.” Entry statements can tell a lot about a country town and mean different things to different people. Every time I drive under the old wooden arch in my birthplace at Manjimup, I get an overwhelming sense of home and belonging. Mrs Gilham agreed they had a special power. “It’s got to be unique so people say, ‘I’ve been through that town and I remember that’,” she said. “When you come down that hill into Balingup, there’s that big sweeping corner and it’s in front of you. It always used to make my heart lift as I drove in and it still does the same now.” After completing a horticulture course in Bunbury, Mrs Gilham also completed a garden project in Balingup’s main street during her time there. It remains a feature of the town and includes a still-flourishing burgundy ash tree she planted in honour of her late husband. “The people in Balingup were just so welcoming to us, we had a great life there and I still love it,” she said.