This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 38.0575° S, 147.0262° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Chickaletta got the farm shop its nickname. Locals call it the Chook House, and the reason is standing at the front door.
The giant metal chicken presides over Myrtlebank Roaming Farms in Gippsland, where the poultry and livestock range freely underneath her. The farm's own account describes her as a local landmark, and the sculpture is the reason people can find the place.
The business behind her started almost by accident. A market customer asked whether the farm had any chooks, because the local egg supplier had pulled out. It did not – but the owner saw the opening, and as soon as the market finished, raced home and bought her first eighty hens. Everything after that grew from a single unanswered question about eggs.
That origin is worth recording because it is how a great many of these enterprises actually begin, and it explains the sculpture. A business built on free-range eggs from a standing start needs to be recognisable fast, and a giant metal chicken does more than any amount of signage. The nickname followed within a very short time, which is the clearest possible evidence that it worked.
Metal rather than fibreglass is a good choice on a working farm – it tolerates weather, stock and machinery in a way a moulded shell does not.
Because she stands at an operating farm shop, seeing her means visiting the business. Nobody appears to have recorded her maker, her dimensions or her date – odd only because everything else about this business is documented in detail by its own owner.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Myrtlebank Roaming Farms currently describes the giant metal chicken at the front of its shop as the landmark that gave the farm shop its “Chook House” nickname. Its current About page also identifies Chickaletta by name and describes it as a local landmark.
ACCESS
Chickaletta stands at Myrtlebank Roaming Farms / The Chook House at 1030 Maffra–Sale Road. Wellington Shire’s current visitor directory map-checks the operating farm-shop destination, and recent visitor evidence confirms vehicle entry and on-site parking. Navigate to the farm business rather than to the sculpture itself; the stored object point represents the site, not a surveyed Chickaletta coordinate.
Current listing gives 1030 Maffra-Sale Road, daily opening hours and a 2024 traveller photo/review explicitly describing the big chicken and onsite parking.
Other
What we're still checking
Exact sculpture coordinates within the Myrtlebank Roaming Farms property are not yet independently pinned.
Something not right?
If this Big Thing has changed, moved or gone, telling us keeps the guide honest for the next traveller.
