This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
41.23115° S, 146.40195° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Latrobe has wild platypus in the river a few kilometres away, which makes the carved one in town a pointer rather than a substitute.
Tourism Tasmania puts it plainly: visits to the Warrawee Forest Reserve on the Mersey River, three and a half kilometres from town, at dawn or dusk are often rewarded with sightings, and there is a carved Big Platypus in town as a reminder. That is an unusually honest framing – the sculpture exists to send you to the real thing rather than to stand in for it.
The platypus deserves the attention. It is a monotreme, an egg-laying mammal with a bill, webbed feet, dense fur and – in males – a venomous spur, and it was so implausible that the first specimen sent to Britain was suspected of being a hoax stitched together from other animals. Tasmania's population is relatively healthy compared with the mainland's.
The sculpture stands at Bells Parade, which is also the site of the Australian Axeman's Hall of Fame. Latrobe has a genuine claim there: the first woodchopping championship was staged in the town in 1891, making it the birthplace of the sport, and the Henley-on-Mersey Australia Day festival still features it.
So Bells Parade carries a monument to a shy aquatic mammal and a hall of fame for competitive tree destruction, about a hundred metres apart.
Burnie City Council's regional Big Things guide places the platypus at Bells Parade.The file is empty on a named maker, the measurements and any date at all.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Tourism Tasmania currently identifies a carved Big Platypus in Latrobe, and Burnie City Council’s regional Big Things guide places it at Bells Parade.
ACCESS
The Big Platypus is in the public Bells Parade / Axemans precinct at Latrobe. Navigate to the public visitor precinct and approach on foot; the destination is not presented as a surveyed parking bay.
