Big Pencils – Burnie CBD

There is a neat local irony in the subject. Burnie was a paper town – the Associated Pulp and Paper Mills operated here for most of the twentieth century and were the reason the city existed at its scale, employing thousands and producing much of Australia's fine paper. The mill's decline reshaped the place. A stationery shop with giant pencils on the roof sits in a city whose whole economy once ran on what you write on.

Burnie City Council's Big Things list is doing quiet work again here. It is the reason several north-west Tasmanian objects have official confirmation at all – the chainsaw at North West Mowers, the globe at Ulverstone, the apple at Spreyton, the truffle dog at Deloraine and the Big Penguin among them. A regional council maintaining that inventory is rare.

Pencils are also a good shape to enlarge: hexagonal in section, tapered at one end, unmistakable in silhouette, and improved rather than diminished by being rendered in bright flat colour.

No source located gives its age, the maker's identity and a measured size.