This Big Thing is still here, but public access is limited. Check the access notes for details before visiting.
A huge granite pyramid in a Ballandean farm paddock, standing 17.5 metres high on a 30-metre-square base and built from about 7,500 tonnes of local stone.
Before you stop
Park at the viewing point rather than at the landmark itself.
Private property: do not enter the paddock or approach the pyramid. Stop only where legal and fully clear of traffic, gates and driveways.
Limited access
Check the access notes for details before visiting
Roadside viewing point
Private to your Passport.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
Recommended arrival available
Viewing point
This takes you to the Big Thing itself. Do not stop at the landmark; use the recommended arrival if stopping.
A free Explorer account reveals the exact recommended arrival point.
This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
28.81476° S, 151.85121° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Seven and a half thousand tonnes of granite, stacked into a pyramid, in a paddock south of Stanthorpe.
It stands 17.5 metres high on a base thirty metres square, and it exists because the stone had to go somewhere. The granite was surplus, excavated on the property, and rather than dumping it the owners built with it – using an excavator and a dump truck, over about eight months.
That is the detail that makes the Ballandean Pyramid genuinely extraordinary rather than merely large. There is no fibreglass, no armature, no fabricator. It is a heap of local rock arranged with earthmoving equipment into the one structural form that will stand up unaided at that scale, which is precisely why the Egyptians used it. A pyramid is what a very large pile of stone becomes when somebody insists on it having straight edges.
The Granite Belt around Ballandean is named for exactly this geology – weathered granite country that produces the boulders of Girraween National Park and the soils that make this Queensland's only significant cool-climate wine region. Surplus granite is not a shortage here.
It sits on Jacobson Road, which runs parallel to the railway line, and the local advice is that once you are on the road you will not miss it. That is a fair claim about a seventeen-metre pyramid.
Because it is on a working farm property rather than public land, this record treats access as restricted. Queensland tourism promotes it as one of Ballandean's unusual roadside sights.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Current Queensland tourism sources describe the pyramid as a deliberate landmark made from surplus granite excavated on the property. It was assembled with an excavator and dump truck over about eight months and is promoted as one of Ballandean's unusual roadside sights.
ACCESS
The pyramid is on private property and must not be approached. View it from the roadside on Jacobsens Road; current regional tourism directions say to turn from Eukey Road onto Jacobsens Road and continue about 1.7 km to the pyramid. Stop only where legal and fully clear of traffic, gates and driveways.
