This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 25.7950° S, 146.5841° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
The town is nicknamed the Meat Ants, its football team is the Mighty Meat Ants, and the park is Meat Ant Park.
A giant meat ant is therefore not a whimsical choice but the town's own emblem made physical, and the council lists the sculpture at the park accordingly.
Meat ants are a genuinely appropriate emblem for western Queensland. They are large, aggressive, and build enormous gravel-topped nests visible from a considerable distance across open country – the flat cleared mounds that dot paddocks all through the inland. They swarm anything that disturbs them, which is precisely why a football team would want the name.
They also do real ecological work. Meat ants are among the few native animals that reliably attack cane toads, and they scavenge carcasses across country where little else would.
Augathella sits on the Warrego River north of Charleville, a small town on the Landsborough Highway, and it has done something unusual: rather than choosing a produce or a pioneer, it took a nickname that was probably meant as an insult and built a monument to it. That confidence is rare in this catalogue, where towns generally reach for the flattering option.
Insects are under-represented among Big Things generally. Against several hundred fruits, animals and tools, this catalogue holds the Poochera ant, the Tintaldra bogong moth, the Brisbane cicada and the Yarra Glen dung beetles – and the meat ant is the only one that is also a football side.
The sculptor goes unnamed in the available material.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Council lists the sculpture at Meat Ant Park with visitor facilities including toilets, barbecue and playground.
ACCESS
The Big Meat Ant is the centrepiece of public Meat Ant Park at 73 Main Street, Augathella. The sculpture site is independently supported around -25.794974, 146.584073, while the park visitor destination is separately mapped around -25.79501, 146.58384. Navigate to the park and use its public parking/facilities rather than treating the sculpture point as a parking bay.
