This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 33.4200° S, 149.6273° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Five metres of gold panner, squatting at his pan since 1979, outside a motel named after him.
The figure stands in front of the Gold Panner Motor Inn at 260 Sydney Road, Kelso, just across the river from Bathurst, and specialist mapping continues to identify it at the active motel precinct.
The posture is the detail worth noticing. Panning is done crouched at water level, swirling a pan, and a five-metre figure in that position is a considerably harder sculpture than a standing man – the mass is low and wide, the pose is unstable-looking, and it reads correctly only if the angle of the pan is right.
Bathurst is the right place for it. Gold was found at Ophir nearby in 1851, triggering the first Australian gold rush and changing the colony permanently – the population, the economy and the politics of New South Wales all turned on it. A panner outside a motel on the road into Bathurst is marking the start of all that.
A 1979 date also makes this one of the older surviving objects in the catalogue, from the same decade as the Cootamundra bat and stumps and the Kew axe.
Destination NSW confirms the motel and records that it caters for cars, trucks, trailers and buses – which tells you what kind of trade a motel on Sydney Road serves.
Neither the sources nor the catalogue give any attribution.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Current specialist mapping continues to identify the Big Gold Panner at the active Gold Panner Motor Inn precinct. Destination NSW confirms the motel at 260 Sydney Road and substantial free parking for cars, trucks, trailers and buses.
ACCESS
Navigate to the Gold Panner Motor Inn at 260 Sydney Road and use the motel's off-road parking. The stored landmark pin is site-level because mapping sources vary between 250 and 260 Sydney Road for the sculpture and host property.
