The Big Croc

The method is the interesting part. It was designed using a photograph of an actual crocodile, with computer technology plotting the animal's shape from the image – and then built with help from students at the Halls Creek TAFE. That combination of digital survey and technical-college labour is a genuinely unusual production route for a Big Thing, and it produced a considerably more accurate animal than freehand fibreglass would have.

The subject is not decorative. The Cambridge Gulf and the rivers around Wyndham hold serious saltwater crocodile populations, and the town's tidal mudflats are among the more spectacular places in the country to see them.

Wyndham itself was established in 1885 during the Halls Creek gold rush and became the region's port. It is an hour's drive from Kununurra, which is a three-hour flight from Perth – which gives some sense of how remote a twenty-metre concrete crocodile can be.

One minor discrepancy: Tourism WA gives the length as twenty metres on the attraction listing and eighteen on the town page. The larger figure is used here and the difference noted.