Long dismissed as tourist kitsch, Australia’s “Big Things” — giant models of everything from koalas to pineapples — are now being heritage-listed and recognized as works of folk art.
The gaudy structures, commissioned since the 1960s by rural towns keen to put themselves on the map, have gathered such a following they are even being compared to Egypt’s pyramids.
“They’re like our pyramids, our temples,” respected artist Reg Mombassa said.
“Because European settlement was so recent, Australia doesn’t have historic old buildings like in other countries and the Big Things are a way of saying ‘we’re here, this is our place.’”
Australia has more than 150 Big Things, including the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour — which is about 13m long — the Big Trout at Adaminaby and the Big Gumboot, an oversized Wellington boot that adorns Australia’s wettest town, Tully in Queensland.
Among the more unusual examples are the Giant Worm, celebrating the oversize invertebrates found near Bass, the Big Cigar in Churchill and Humpty Doo’s Big Boxing Crocodile.
Mombassa, internationally renowned for his designs for surfware brand Mambo, painted his favorite Big Things in 2007 for a range of stamps commissioned by Australia Post.
He said he first fell in love with them when traveling around the countryside in a crowded mini-bus in the 1970s and 1980s with his band Mental As Anything, best known for 1985’s Live It Up.
“You’d be on these long, long trips and they’d break up the tedium,” he said.
He described their tackiness as part of their charm, calling them a typically extroverted Australian phenomenon.
“Some of them are pretty crappy,” he said. “But others are folk art, definitely.
“You look at the Big Merino (a sheep in Goulburn weighing almost 100 tonnes) where they’ve recreated the texture of the wool in concrete. Or the Golden Guitar, that’s a beautiful-looking guitar.”
The Big Things’ highest accolade came earlier this year when the Queensland government placed the Big Pineapple on its heritage register, ranking it among the state’s top historic buildings and cultural sites.
The Queensland Heritage Council said the 16m high fiberglass fruit had attracted millions of visitors since it opened in 1971.
“[It] is important in demonstrating the development of agri-tourism and roadside attractions in Queensland,” the council said.
There have also been lovingly photographed coffee-table books dedicated to Big Things, and Web sites where overseas tourists express a mixture of admiration and bemusement at the giant structures.
Julie-Anne and Rob McPherson fell under the spell of the Big Things late last year, when they bought the Giant Koala at Dadswells Bridge in Victoria.
Rob was working as an incident controller on Melbourne’s highways at the time, an often stressful job investigating car crashes, and the couple wanted to escape the rat race.
“We were looking to maybe buy a caravan park or something,” Rob said. “But I stopped in here, found the place was for sale and just fell in love with it.”
He said friends and family were initially skeptical when told they were buying the 14m bronze and fiberglass koala, which comes with 1.4 hectares of land and an adjoining shop and cafe.
The pair are in the process of revamping the koala, nicknamed Karla, installing red lights in her eyes to give her an imposing night-time appearance and applying a lick of paint to make her markings more distinctive.
In recent months, Karla has been featured in comedian Paul Hogan’s yet-to-be-released feature film Charlie and Boots and a national advertising campaign for a telephone company.
Rob said the public’s fascination with Big Things showed no sign of waning.
“We get 100 cars a day coming here and buses making the trip specially, bringing in 50 people at a time,” he said.
“There’s just something special that appeals people, it’s a sense of fun or something, I don’t know.”
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
President William Lai’s (賴清德) March 13 national security speech marked a turning point. He signaled that the government was finally getting serious about a whole-of-society approach to defending the nation. The presidential office summarized his speech succinctly: “President Lai introduced 17 major strategies to respond to five major national security and united front threats Taiwan now faces: China’s threat to national sovereignty, its threats from infiltration and espionage activities targeting Taiwan’s military, its threats aimed at obscuring the national identity of the people of Taiwan, its threats from united front infiltration into Taiwanese society through cross-strait exchanges, and its threats from
Despite the intense sunshine, we were hardly breaking a sweat as we cruised along the flat, dedicated bike lane, well protected from the heat by a canopy of trees. The electric assist on the bikes likely made a difference, too. Far removed from the bustle and noise of the Taichung traffic, we admired the serene rural scenery, making our way over rivers, alongside rice paddies and through pear orchards. Our route for the day covered two bike paths that connect in Fengyuan District (豐原) and are best done together. The Hou-Feng Bike Path (后豐鐵馬道) runs southward from Houli District (后里) while the
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at