The Big Beer Can

The logic is sound and getting more common. Building an eleven-metre object from scratch is expensive, requires approvals and creates a maintenance liability. Painting one that is already standing, already certified and already doing a job costs a fraction of that and produces the same landmark. As councils and businesses have worked this out, the painted-infrastructure Big Thing has quietly become one of the most active parts of the tradition.

Newcastle is a good place for it. Kotara is a suburban centre in a city with a strong club culture, and Club Kotara is an operating venue rather than a tourist site – so the can is aimed at locals and at the drive past on the way to the shops, not at highway travellers.

What it does not have, being new, is any history at all. This record exists to capture the object at the beginning, which is unusual: most Big Things enter a catalogue decades after anyone stopped noting who made them.

What the tower originally was, and who designed the can, are not recorded.