The Big Emus

Strathfieldsaye, Victoria, Australia

Public art

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Current

Checked by Project Big Things · Sep 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A pair of oversized metal emu sculptures in the Imagine Estate at Strathfieldsaye.

Private to your Passport.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

No recommended arrival yet

We have not checked a recommended place to arrive or stop here yet.

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The Big Emus

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Site-level location · 36.8064° S, 144.3638° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A pair of metal emus in a residential estate's Emu Garden, in a suburb of Bendigo still being built.

A 2024 specialist survey places the sculptures at Imagine Estate's Emu Garden, and planning documentation for the estate labels the Imagine Estate Emu Garden as a mapped local feature. The estate itself remains under active development in 2026.

That planning-document detail is the interesting one. When a developer's own plans name a piece of open space after the sculptures in it, the objects have become part of the estate's formal geography rather than decoration added afterwards – the same thing that happened at Joey Park in Throsby and the Big Apple complex at Spreyton.

Developer-commissioned art in new estates is a growing category in this catalogue. The wheelbarrow at Clyde, the sixteen pelicans at Marriott Waters and these emus are all private commissions creating identity for places that have no history to draw on yet.

Emus are locally appropriate. They are genuinely present through central Victoria's box-ironbark country, and Strathfieldsaye sits on Bendigo's south-eastern edge where the suburb meets that country.

A pair rather than one is right too. Emus are often seen in twos and small groups, and the male raises the chicks alone – so a pair reads as a family unit in a way a single bird would not, which suits a residential estate.

The file is empty on the name of whoever built it, its proportions and a date.

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PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

Current specialist and planning material places the Big Emus in Imagine Estate’s Emu Garden. Independent descriptions locate the sculptures at the Swanson Boulevard / Kiwarra Court corner, while the 11 September 2026 Land of the Bigs reference independently pins the Big Emus at approximately -36.806445, 144.363837, around 137 m east of PBT’s former general reserve anchor.

ACCESS

The Big Emus are in the public Emu Garden / recreation reserve at the Swanson Boulevard and Kiwarra Court corner in Strathfieldsaye. Production now uses the corroborated Big Emus site point at approximately -36.806445, 144.363837 as a site anchor, not as a claimed centroid for either individual sculpture. The surrounding roads are public, but a specific lawful recommended visitor parking point has not yet been independently verified, so direct navigation remains withheld.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

Find another Big Thing nearby

Current – limited access

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An oversized rooster landmark outside Birds R Us in Golden Square.

Public art

8.9 km away

✓ Recommended arrival recorded

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

Big Things VIC checklist 2024

My Rig Adventures · recorded 2026-08-22

Recent specialist checklist identifies BIG Emus at Imagine Estate Emu Garden, Swanson Boulevard.

Community

City of Greater Bendigo – Register of Public Roads

City of Greater Bendigo · recorded 2026-09-11

Confirms Kiwarra Court from Swanson Boulevard to the court bowl is a public local road; supports public-road context but not a specific parking bay.

Government

Imagine Estate / Emu Rise planning documentation

Planning documentation · recorded 2026-08-22

Planning map labels the Imagine Estate Emu Garden.

Government

Pacer – Imagine Estate Recreation Reserve

Pacer · recorded 2026-09-11

Maps Imagine Estate Recreation Reserve at 8 Kiwarra Court / -36.8064, 144.3623; used only as a site-level Emu Garden anchor, not an individual sculpture centroid.

Other

What we're still checking

Open-licence image search completed 24 August 2026. No defensible reusable image with file-level commercial-use provenance was verified in the completed Commons, government/open-licence and archival/open-collection sweep.

Exact Big Emus coordinates within Imagine Estate are not yet independently pinned.

Preferred safe visitor arrival for the Big Emus has not yet been independently verified.

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