This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
35.38328° S, 142.18948° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Two corrugated-metal malleefowl in a former railway yard, opposite the pub, in a Mallee town of very few people.
Phil Rigg made them and they were installed in 2013. The pair stand in the old railway-yard precinct across from the hotel, functioning as both town landmark and public art – which in Patchewollock is effectively the same job.
The bird is the right subject and a serious one. The malleefowl is a ground-dwelling mound-builder found in exactly this country: it rakes together an enormous mound of sand and leaf litter, buries its eggs in it, and regulates the temperature of the compost heap by adding and removing material, testing it with its beak. It is one of the more remarkable pieces of behaviour in Australian birds. It is also declining, threatened by fox predation, grazing and the clearing of the mallee scrub it depends on.
Corrugated iron is the correct material for the Mallee, where the vernacular is entirely sheds, tanks and roofing, and where the palette is dust and galvanised metal.
Patchewollock is best known for a silo mural – part of the Silo Art Trail that has drawn visitors into Wimmera and Mallee towns that had almost no tourism before – so the birds sit alongside a much larger piece of the same impulse.
A pair rather than one is right too. Malleefowl work their mounds as a pair, and the male does most of the temperature management.
There is no record of the measurements.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
The sculptures remain in the former railway-yard precinct opposite the hotel and function as both town landmark and public art.
ACCESS
The Big Mallee Fowl sculptures stand in the former railway precinct on Federation Street in Patchewollock. Current regional tourism confirms car and coach parking at the adjacent Baring Road silo-art site, so lawful visitor parking is established. PBT still withholds direct navigation until the preferred exact car-park point is independently map-checked and distinguished from the nearby OSM feature tagged as truck parking.
The exact Big Mallee Fowl sculpture location is verified, but a specific lawful vehicle arrival/parking coordinate has not yet been independently map-checked.
Something not right?
If this Big Thing has changed, moved or gone, telling us keeps the guide honest for the next traveller.
