Meet water tower mural artist Joel Fergie
Known as the Banksy of the bush, Zookeeper is an artist who travels around outback Australia painting giant murals. Unlike Banksy, the Zookeeper doesn't hide his identity.
Joel Fergie aka "Zookeeper" is based Sunshine Coast. His large-scale artworks span inner-city laneways to remote silos and water towers across central Australia.
Some of his biggest works can be seen on painted tanks and silos in Cloncurry, Mackay, Hughenden, Thallon as well as interstate.
Joel says he got the name Zookeeper from his childhood love of wildlife. "As a kid I was obsessed with animals and I was a huge David Attenborough fan and as I learnt to paint, animals became a big part of that," he said.
The 32-year-old artist, who studied fine art at QUT and graduated in 2011, said art was a big part of his life growing up.
"I wasn't born great at painting; it was something that I had to put a lot of time and practice into and gradually over time I got better.
"I started by doing my bedroom wall and then under our house, then a few friends asked me to do their café and then a I did a soccer club and the more I did the more opportunities arose."
The biggest job that Joel has done was seven silos at Sea Lake in north-west Victoria which took him over three weeks. When tackling the big jobs, Zookeeper collaborates with his mate and fellow artist Drapl aka Travis Vinson.
"We meet in 2010 and we had heard of each other and ever since then, when there's a big job that requires many hands, we collaborate," he said.
"The big jobs can take weeks and weeks of planning and we can use over 500 litres of paint."
Most of Zookeeper's and Drapl's work comes from community grants or funds raised by the community, and over the past decade he believes he has painted more than 1,000 murals.
"My favourite part of painting in the outback is the openness of people. There's fewer people, so they have more time for you," he said.
Joel's last big mural was a water tower in Middlemount which he finished in December and last week he finished a retaining wall in the Pioneer Valley community at the Marian State School which was only 20 metres by 2 metres.
Image: ABC