This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
35.29246° S, 149.12121° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Bogong moths migrate to the Australian Alps in their millions each spring, and for thousands of years Aboriginal people travelled into the high country to meet them.
The large cast-concrete moths at Acton, between the National Museum of Australia and AIATSIS, were commissioned in 2001 from a design by the Ngunnawal artist Jim Williams with Matthew Harding, and artsACT records that they celebrate Ngunnawal culture and the moth migration.
That siting is exact. Placing work about Ngunnawal culture between the national museum and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies puts it precisely where the country's institutional memory sits – and on Ngunnawal country, which is the more important fact.
The moths themselves are extraordinary. They breed on the inland plains, fly hundreds of kilometres to aestivate in cool granite crevices in the Alps through summer, and return. Their numbers have collapsed in recent years, badly enough that the species has been listed as endangered internationally – a startling status for an insect that was once so abundant it darkened lights across Canberra every spring.
This entry states the cultural association as artsACT records it and does not elaborate. What the moth means to Ngunnawal people is theirs to describe.
Harding also made the Casuarina Pods elsewhere in the city, so his enlarged-natural-form method appears twice in Canberra's collection.
Nothing located supplies its scale.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
artsACT confirms the large Bogong Moths were commissioned in 2001 from a design by Ngunnawal artist Jim Williams with Matthew Harding, celebrating Ngunnawal culture and the moth migration.
ACCESS
Public institutional precinct on Acton Peninsula. The ACT Government's own public art register (artsACT / data.act.gov.au) places the Bogong Moths sculpture and its associated car park at -35.292465, 149.121208, in the National Museum of Australia's public visitor car park between the Museum and AIATSIS, signposted directly off Lawson Crescent. Paid parking applies weekdays 8:30am-5pm ($4.40/hr or $18/day); free on weekends and public holidays.
National Museum of Australia · recorded 2026-09-11
Museum at Lawson Crescent, Acton Peninsula, with public visitor parking (paid on weekdays, free on weekends and public holidays), accessible bays near the main entrance and coach bays. No car-park coordinate.
