The Big Magpie & Nest

The bird was made by Dave Halloran of the Bororen Furniture Shop – a local maker, a few minutes up the highway, rather than a specialist fabricator. That is characteristic of the smaller Big Things: they tend to come from whoever in the district had the workshop, the materials and the willingness.

Australian rugby league is full of Magpies, and the nest is the detail that makes this one specific. A magpie alone would be a logo. A magpie settled into a nest on top of the clubhouse reads as the bird having claimed the building, which is a considerably better joke.

Owe'e and his nest were confirmed still in place in 2025, and the oval remains an active community sporting ground.

Miriam Vale sits on the Bruce Highway between Gladstone and Bundaberg, in the Gladstone Region, and is the sort of place most travellers know only as a name on a sign. That makes the choice of subject more pointed. A highway town chasing passing traffic would build something visible from the road; a club mascot on a clubhouse roof at the local oval is aimed inward, at the people who use the ground.

Australian magpies, incidentally, do not build nests in anything resembling the tidy bowl of the sculpture – real magpie nests are rough stick platforms high in a fork. The nest here is a cartoonist's nest, and better for it.