This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 38.4864° S, 145.2612° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Phillip Island is famous for penguins, and its Big Thing is a koala.
The sculpture stands beside Rusty Water Brewery on Phillip Island Road at Cowes, and the choice is less contrary than it looks: the island holds a koala conservation centre and a genuine population of the animals, and a giant penguin would compete directly with the Penguin Parade rather than complement it.
One clarification matters here, because the two are constantly confused. This is not the Giant Koala at Dadswells Bridge on the Western Highway, which is fourteen metres tall, weighs twelve tonnes and is one of the best-known objects in Victoria. That one is in the Wimmera, hundreds of kilometres away. This is a separate, smaller koala on Phillip Island, and listings regularly merge them.
The brewery it stands beside has a nice local sideline in history. Visitors keep asking about the old brick towers dotted around the island; they are chicory kilns, from an industry introduced in 1870, and the brewery has made a beer using roasted chicory in the mash as a nod to it. Chicory was a serious Phillip Island crop for the best part of a century before the tourism arrived.
Current official tourism material confirms the brewery is active at 1821 Phillip Island Road and Victorian Big Things coverage continues to identify the koala beside it.
The sculpture's exact position within the locality has not been independently confirmed, and its maker, date and size are not recorded.
The confusion with Dadswells Bridge is worth guarding against for a practical reason: a traveller planning around the wrong koala would be aiming at the Western Highway in the Wimmera rather than an island reached by bridge from the south-east of Melbourne.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Current official tourism material confirms Rusty Water Brewery remains active at 1821 Phillip Island Road, and current Victorian Big Things coverage continues to identify the Big Koala beside the venue. The exact position of the sculpture within the locality has not been independently confirmed.
ACCESS
The Big Koala is beside the Rusty Water Brewery / Phillip Island Brewing Co precinct at 1821 Phillip Island Road. The catalogue uses the independently mapped venue as a site reference rather than claiming an exact sculpture pin. The current tourism listing confirms car and coach parking, so the operating venue is the recommended driving destination.
