This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
17.67813° S, 141.06668° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Six metres of barramundi, in a town where the fish is the reason people come.
The Gulf of Carpentaria barramundi fishery is one of the most significant in northern Australia, both commercially and for recreational anglers who drive extraordinary distances to fish the Norman and the surrounding rivers in the dry season. Normanton sits at the centre of it.
Barramundi are a genuinely strange animal to build a monument to, because of how they live. They are catadromous, moving between fresh water and salt to breed, and they change sex – hatching as males, spending several years that way, then becoming female as they grow. Every very large barramundi is female. A six-metre one is therefore, biologically, a very old fish indeed.
The town's other landmark is Krys, the 8.63-metre crocodile replica commemorating an animal shot on the Norman in 1957. The two objects together give Normanton a pair of monuments to the river's largest predators – one to a fish still being caught, one to a crocodile that was killed.
Normanton is also the terminus of the Gulflander, the isolated railway line to Croydon that has never connected to any other track in Queensland.
Barramundi are among the most commonly attempted Big Thing subjects across northern Australia, and this catalogue holds several. Six metres puts Normanton's at the larger end, though the fish's elongated shape means length translates less impressively than height.
The year it went up, the name of whoever built it and the materials are missing from the documentation.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
One of Normanton’s signature photo landmarks in the Gulf of Carpentaria region.
ACCESS
Navigate to Gulfland Motel & Caravan Park at 11 Landsborough Street, which Carpentaria Shire Council identifies as home of the Big Barramundi. Use onsite property access rather than stopping on the road.
Current council tourism directory explicitly calls the operating Gulfland Motel & Caravan Park home of the BIG BARRAMUNDI and gives 11 Landsborough Street.
Government
Something not right?
If this Big Thing has changed, moved or gone, telling us keeps the guide honest for the next traveller.
