General News
3 October, 2025
Board game inspires local artist
LOCAL artist Billy Earnshaw has managed to combine his love of painting and ‘all things Warrnambool’ with the popular game board, Monopoly.
A giant board, carefully designed and intricately painted by Billy, features many of Warrnambool’s popular landmarks and events, both past and present.
“This board, well actually there’s four boards that make up the one large one, depicts all that is great about Warrnambool, both past and present,” Billy said.
“It took quite a lot of thought and about four months to complete – I worked on it on the kitchen table in between shifts as a community health nurse.”
The board (or rather, four of them; each measuring about a metre square) pays homage to the likes of the Southern Right Whale, Jericho Cup, Maremmas, local service clubs, Melbourne-Warrnambool Cycling Classic, Sprintcars, Mozart Hall, Kermond’s and the Fletcher Jones Silver Ball.
“There are so many things that are synonymous with Warrnambool; I couldn’t include them all but I hope I’ve given a good even spread.
“I feel the colours I’ve used are vibrant and happy and hope that people feel the same sense of happiness and pride I do when they see this.”
The idea to create a magical piece of artwork, based on the Monopoly board game, came about during the COVID period when Billy was searching for a creative outlet and a novel gift idea for friends who were about to celebrate milestone birthdays.
“I’ve always had a love of music and during the onset of COVID restrictions I began painting boards that focussed on musical themes,” Billy said.
“After that I painted boards for friends as birthday gifts; I spoke to their family and friends and used those conversations as the basis for points of interest on their boards – such as childhood memories, jobs, schools, places of birth.
“They absolutely loved them and after making half a dozen or so I then did one for the Koroit Festival which turned out quite well, before beginning this most recent one on Warrnambool.”
While this Warrnambool board currently hangs pride of place in Billy’s Warrnambool home, its future location is yet to be decided.
