This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 35.2748° S, 139.4698° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Two olives – one green, one black – beside a road at Tailem Bend, and behind them the remains of the industry that put them there.
The pair of giant fibreglass olives stands at 77 Big Olive Grove, an address that tells most of the story: the road is named for the operation. This was the Big Olive, a processing complex and visitor attraction built around South Australian olive growing, in country along the Murray east of Adelaide where the crop does well.
The processing plant has since been through auction. Current business and auction material still uses the Big Olive Grove address and documents the former site, while recent imagery confirms the roadside sculpture survives.
So the sculptures have outlived the venture. That is the ordinary sequence for agricultural tourism ventures of this kind, which were common through the 1990s and 2000s – a processing operation with a shop, a tasting room and a tour attached, dependent on both a commodity price and a visitor economy, and vulnerable when either moves.
The two-olive arrangement is a nice piece of thinking. Green and black olives are the same fruit at different ripeness, not different varieties, and showing both is a small piece of education built into what is otherwise a pair of roadside spheres. Anyone who has wondered about it has the answer in front of them.
The former attraction should not be assumed open. What is confirmed is the olives, at the roadside, at an address named after them.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
The pair of giant fibreglass olives remains identifiable at 77 Big Olive Grove. Current 2025–26 business and auction material continues to use the Big Olive Grove address and documents the former processing site, while recent imagery confirms the roadside sculpture survives. The former visitor attraction/processing operation should not be assumed open.
ACCESS
The Big Olive sculptures remain associated with 77 Big Olive Grove, Tailem Bend, but the former processing/visitor operation has been redeveloped and current public access must not be assumed. Treat the mapped former site as the landmark reference only; view externally where lawful and do not enter the property unless current public access is explicitly available.
