This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
33.14155° S, 136.42214° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
The Venning family wanted more people to stop at their gem shop. It took them eighteen months of shaping metal rods and fibreglassing to get there, and in 1993 Kimba got an eight-metre galah.
It worked far beyond the shop. Kimba sits at the well-known halfway point across Australia, on the Eyre Highway run between the eastern states and Perth, and the combination of that claim and a very large pink-and-grey bird has made it one of the standard stops on the crossing. Thousands of travellers photograph it.
The galah is a good choice, and a slightly cheeky one. It is among the most common and most recognisable Australian birds, it is genuinely handsome in pink and grey, and its name doubles as a mild Australian insult – which the town has never seemed to mind.
In 2021 the bird was given a complete makeover for its thirtieth birthday. Two artists used thirty-two separate shades of pink and grey, and the refreshed galah was unveiled to a waiting crowd. Thirty-two shades is a serious piece of work: a real galah's plumage grades continuously rather than sitting in flat blocks, and matching that in paint is the difference between a sculpture that looks like a bird and one that looks like a toy.
National recognition followed. The Royal Australian Mint featured the Big Galah on a 2025 one-dollar coin in its Aussie Big Things series, which is about as official as this tradition gets.
The gem shop that started it all is the part most people never learn. A family business wanting more foot traffic produced a national landmark, a coin and a thirtieth-birthday party – which is a considerable return on eighteen months of fibreglassing.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
The Big Galah is an eight-metre pink-and-grey galah at Kimba, marking the town's well-known position at the halfway point across Australia. The sculpture was refurbished in 2021 and continues to feature in current South Australian tourism and Kimba Council material as a town landmark.
ACCESS
A conservative vehicle arrival is The Gums Rest Area on the Eyre Highway, a short walk west of the Galah.
