This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
16.25018° S, 145.31816° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
A giant barramundi on Stewart Street, at a property that took its name from the fish.
Daintree village is small – a few hundred people on the river upstream of the ferry – and it sits at the edge of one of the most significant pieces of rainforest on earth. The Daintree is the oldest continuously surviving tropical rainforest known, older than the Amazon, and the surrounding World Heritage area is the reason nearly every visitor is there.
Which makes a barramundi a slightly contrary choice. The obvious subject would be a cassowary, or a Boyd's forest dragon, or a fan palm – something that says rainforest. Instead the village chose the fish, because the Daintree River is a working fishing river and because the crocodile-spotting cruises that leave from here run on the same water.
That is the more honest local claim. Rainforest is what people come to see; the river is what the village actually does.
The barramundi is described as long-standing, associated with the Big Barra property in the village centre – one of the small class of objects that gave a business its name rather than the reverse, alongside the Beerwah mower and the Glenreagh golden dog.
This is the third barramundi in the catalogue, with Normanton's six-metre fish in the Gulf and others across the north. Between them they mark the extent of a species that defines recreational fishing across the whole top of the continent.
The materials, any date at all, the person responsible and its size did not survive into any source.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
A long-standing Daintree Big Thing associated with the Big Barra property in the village centre.
ACCESS
Tourism Queensland still promotes the Daintree Big Barramundi, but current host-business status at 12 Stewart Street is contradictory. Keep the attraction visible while withholding turn-by-turn arrival guidance until the site is independently reconciled.
