Mel Haines creates masquerade-style scarecrows for Barossa Vintage Festival Barossa Vintage Festival events co-ordinator Ellen Stephens with some of Mel Haines' scarecrows in Murray St, Tanunda. IT HAS taken plenty of brains to make these scarecrows. Tanunda resident Mel Haines, with the help of a friend, a neighbour and three children, created seven masquerade-style scarecrows for the Barossa Vintage Festival. About 50 scarecrows will pop up all over the Barossa Valley to mark the wine festival, which starts on Saturday. Ms Haines says making the scarecrows has been a "bowerbird exercise," using fabric and gems she has collected over the years. She says she loves seeing different scarecrows pop up across the region. "It gives you a bit of a smile," she says. Someone who wasn't smiling was Megan Samain, who was woken at 5am by police to be told someone had burned her scarecrow. "We've put a new scarecrow up over the weekend, a CFS man putting out the fire, so we've tried to make a bit of fun out of a bad situation," she said. Festival manager Samantha Foreman said it was one of two reports of vandalism this year, which she described as "unfortunate." She encouraged people to put on their creative hats and make their own scarecrows for judging in categories such as most artistic and most traditional. "It's great to see so much colour and vibrancy and the effort people put in," she said.