Ohakune’s famous 7.5-metre carrot has greeted travellers since 1984 and now anchors Carrotland Adventure Park, surrounded by an expanding cast of giant vegetables.
Venue entrance
P
Parking
onsite
Private to your Passport.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
Recommended arrival available
Attraction entrance
This takes you to the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
A free Explorer account reveals the exact recommended arrival point.
This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
39.42004° S, 175.40372° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
The Ohakune carrot was built to sell a bank.
It is 7.5 metres tall, the largest vegetable in New Zealand, and it was constructed as a prop for an ANZ Bank television commercial in the early 1980s. When the shoot finished, rather than being scrapped, it was donated to the town – and it has stood in the same spot since 1984.
Ohakune could hardly have received a better gift. This is genuine carrot country: the volcanic soils on the southern side of Ruapehu produce a very large share of the North Island's crop, and the district's identity was already agricultural before it was a ski town. The commercial gave the town an object it might never have commissioned for itself, and the object happened to be exactly right.
What followed is the interesting part. Rather than leaving it as a photo stop, Ohakune has grown a whole attraction around it: Carrotland Adventure Park, with the carrot as centrepiece and an expanding cast of other giant vegetables around it, now drawing in the order of 13,000 visitors a month. In summer 2023 the carrot was voted Landmark of the Year in a nationwide public vote.
That trajectory – advertising prop to town gift to voted national landmark to the anchor of a purpose-built park – is close to the ideal life of a Big Thing, and very few of them manage the whole sequence. Most stop at the second step and slowly rust.
The town's other identity should be mentioned, because it explains the seasonality. Ohakune is the main southern base for skiing on Mount Ruapehu, so it runs two economies out of phase with each other: snow in winter, and everything else the rest of the year. A vegetable-themed adventure park is not a diversion from that – it is a deliberate answer to the problem of having a town built for a season.
The carrot is therefore doing more work than it appears to. It anchors the half of the year when the mountain is not the reason anyone is here.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Visit Ruapehu currently promotes the world-famous carrot, confirming its 7.5-metre height, 1984 installation and continued role as the centrepiece of Carrotland. 1News also documented its continuing visitor importance in 2026.
ACCESS
The attraction sits within a public adventure park with toilets and recreation facilities. Use the park’s normal visitor access; no separate sculpture-specific arrival pin is needed.
