This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 31.6349° S, 152.7224° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
A giant axe put up in 1979 to recognise what timber meant to Kew, and refurbished nearly forty years later.
The sculpture stands beside the iKew Visitor Centre on the New South Wales mid-north coast, and Port Macquarie-Hastings Council's current community plan confirms it there and records its most recent refurbishment in 2016–17.
That refurbishment record is worth noting. A council community plan is a planning document, not a tourism brochure, and an oversized object appearing in one means it has been assessed as an asset with a maintenance obligation. Very few Big Things reach that status; most are private property whose upkeep depends on whoever owns the shopfront.
The subject is regional history. The Camden Haven and the country behind it were heavily logged from the nineteenth century – red cedar first, then hardwood – and the timber industry shaped the settlements along this coast for generations. Kew sits inland from Laurieton at the junction of the Pacific and Ocean Drive routes, and the axe marks what the district was built on.
This is the second Big Axe in the catalogue, alongside the one at the Longley International Hotel in Tasmania's Huon Valley. Both mark timber districts, and both carry the same slight unease: an axe is a monument to an industry that has been genuinely contested for decades.
A 1979 date also makes this one of the older surviving objects in the collection.
Its proportions and a date: unknown.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Port Macquarie-Hastings Council's current community plan confirms the Big Axe beside the iKew Visitor Centre and records its most recent refurbishment in 2016–17.
ACCESS
Navigate to the iKew Visitor Centre at 133 Nancy Bird Walton Drive and use the visitor-centre parking before approaching the Big Axe on foot.
