Robertson's approximately 10-metre giant potato, built in 1977 to celebrate the district's potato-growing heritage.
Before you stop
The Big Potato site is privately owned and subject to redevelopment proposals. Do not assume access beyond public visitor areas or ignore current construction/parking signage.
Private to your Passport.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
Recommended arrival available
Other
This takes you to the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
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This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 34.5892° S, 150.5981° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
For decades the kindest thing said about the Big Potato was that it looked like something other than a potato. It is now painted as a pig, and everybody is much happier.
A local farmer built it in 1977 to celebrate Robertson's potato-growing identity – about ten metres long and four metres wide, hollow concrete, with an interior designed so people could walk inside. The Southern Highlands district around Robertson has rich red basalt soil and a cool wet climate, and its potatoes were genuinely the thing it was known for.
Then came the film. Babe was shot in and around Robertson in the mid-1990s, and the district acquired a second and considerably more famous identity. The Corrimal artist Samuel Hall has since painted the landmark with Babe, Ferdinand the duck and the three singing mice from the Oscar-nominated film, so the giant spud now carries the movie that made the village internationally recognisable.
That is an unusually elegant solution to a real problem. The sculpture's shape had been the butt of jokes for forty years; repainting rather than replacing it kept the 1977 object entirely intact while giving it something new to be about. Its canonical identity remains the Big Potato.
NSW Government material notes that Australia has roughly 150 sculptures and structures of this kind, and Robertson's is only one of them – a useful piece of scale for anyone who assumes there are a handful.
It stands on the Illawarra Highway, and you can go inside it, which very few of them allow.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
NSW Government and current Robertson village material confirm the Big Potato on the Illawarra Highway. As of the current research check it still carries the Babe-inspired 'Pig Potato' themed paint treatment, while its canonical identity remains the Big Potato.
ACCESS
For a vehicle arrival, use the adjacent Spud Lane Gallery visitor destination at 74–76 Hoddle Street. NSW Government identifies it as next to the Big Potato and lists a car park. The Potato itself remains on privately owned land, so follow current access, parking and redevelopment signage.
