This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
28.44148° S, 153.49164° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
The motorcycle opposite the Moo Moo Roadhouse raced in the 1993 Grand Prix season before it was ever a landmark.
It is a roughly three-metre replica of a Yamaha YZR500, and its owner's account traces a real chain of custody: it did the rounds in 1993 for the Grand Prix, was then bought by the Sydney Ducati store and displayed there, and afterwards went to the Queensland Motorcycle Museum before ending up at Mooball.
It has also had a brush with the law. Until 2014 the bike carried Marlboro sponsorship livery – accurately reproducing the 500cc Grand Prix machines of the period, when tobacco money funded most of the grid – and it was ordered to be taken down, tobacco advertising having long since become illegal. Stripping the branding from a historically accurate replica is a small, strange piece of the wider story of how thoroughly cigarettes were removed from Australian public life.
The location is good. Mooball sits on Tweed Valley Way in the Northern Rivers, and the 24-kilometre Northern Rivers Rail Trail now runs through it, connecting Murwillumbah, Stokers Siding, Burringbar, Mooball and Crabbes Creek across sixteen restored bridges and through two tunnels – including the unlit 524-metre Burringbar Range Tunnel, left dark to protect resident bats.
That has given a small village a second stream of visitors arriving slowly, on bikes of a different kind entirely.
A geotagged photograph from May 2024 confirms the motorcycle and its exact position.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
A geotagged May 2024 Wikimedia photo confirms the motorcycle and exact location, while current 2026 Northern Rivers material confirms the Moo Moo Roadhouse remains an active driver and rail-trail stop at 5887 Tweed Valley Way.
ACCESS
Park at the Moo Moo Roadhouse at 5887 Tweed Valley Way and approach the viewing area carefully. The motorcycle is across the road from the roadhouse, so cross only where safe and do not stop a vehicle beside the sculpture itself.
