Big Pelicans – Marriott Waters

Lyndhurst, Victoria, Australia

Public art

✓

Current

Checked by Project Big Things · Sep 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A large group of corten-steel pelican sculptures distributed around the Marriott Waters wetlands in Lyndhurst.

Before you stop

Use lawful reserve parking/access only and keep paths, sports areas and emergency access clear.

Parking on site

Private to your Passport.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Recommended arrival available

Onsite parking

This takes you to the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

A free Explorer account reveals the exact recommended arrival point.

Big Pelicans – Marriott Waters

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Approximate location · 38.060° S, 145.250° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Sixteen corten steel pelicans, up to 3.6 metres tall, distributed around a wetland – and they are only part of what the developer commissioned.

Folko Kooper's portfolio records the set of sixteen pelicans for Marriott Waters Estate at Lyndhurst, commissioned by Villawood Properties, in corten steel up to 3.6 metres, with pelican works reaching eight-metre wingspans. The same client commissioned two 1.8-metre cockatoos for the shopping centre, seven of thirty bronze and stainless steel parrots on perches for the estate, and a four-metre-diameter corten steel nest.

That is a substantial private art programme. A residential developer buying dozens of significant sculptures for a new estate is doing something quite different from a council commissioning one civic work – building an identity for a place that does not have one yet, before the first residents arrive.

The pelicans suit the site. Marriott Waters is built around constructed wetlands in Melbourne's outer south-east, and Australian pelicans genuinely colonise water bodies of this kind quickly. Sixteen of them scattered across the wetland reads as a flock rather than a monument, which is how the birds actually occur.

Corten weathers to a stable rust surface needing no maintenance, which for sixteen sculptures spread across public open space is the deciding practical consideration.

Distributing a work across a landscape rather than concentrating it is unusual in this catalogue – the Forgotten World Highway sculptures in Taranaki do something similar, and the Giants of Mandurah more so.

Nothing is recorded of the year it went up.

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PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

Sculptor Folko Kooper’s current portfolio documents a set of 16 pelican sculptures up to 3.6 metres tall for Marriott Waters, including pelican works with 8-metre wingspans. Current local public-art coverage continues to identify the bird sculptures around the wetlands.

ACCESS

The Marriott Waters pelicans are a distributed collection around the wetlands rather than a single-point attraction. Navigate to the City of Casey-created Marriott Waters Reserve walking-loop start/finish at approximately -38.071901, 145.249070, where the official walk explicitly records parking, then explore the paved wetlands loop on foot. The collection-geometry task remains open because the individual pelican clusters are not yet all pinned.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

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Buildings and structures

5.3 km away

✓ Recommended arrival recorded

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

City of Casey – Marriott Waters Reserve walking loop

City of Casey / Walking Maps · recorded 2026-09-11

City of Casey-created 4 km loop from Boland Drive states parking is available at the start/finish and identifies a wetlands viewpoint with pelican sculptures. Supports the reserve as a lawful navigation anchor, not individual sculpture geometry.

Government

Kooper Tasmania – Marriott Waters Pelican Sculptures

Kooper Tasmania · recorded 2026-08-23

Sculptor’s current portfolio documents the Marriott Waters pelican sets, including 16 corten-steel works up to 3.6m and larger 8m-wingspan works.

Official

Melbourne Playgrounds – Casey public art

Melbourne Playgrounds · recorded 2026-08-23

Current local public-art guide identifies the large bird sculptures around the Marriott Waters wetlands.

Community

What we're still checking

Open-licence image search completed 24 August 2026. No defensible reusable image with file-level commercial-use provenance was verified in the completed Commons, government/open-licence and archival/open-collection sweep.

Current attraction geography remains locality-level because Sprint 8 did not find defensible mapped/GIS/geotagged site or object geometry.

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