The Big Prawn – Tweed Heads

It is nonetheless a real entry and worth keeping distinct, because the two are regularly confused in listings and photographs. Northern New South Wales has a prawning coast and more than one town with a claim to it, and a catalogue that collapsed them would lose a genuine local landmark to a more famous neighbour.

The scale question is interesting on its own terms. There is no agreed threshold at which an oversized object becomes a Big Thing, and 1.5 metres sits right at the boundary. What settles it is function: this prawn exists to be seen from the road and to say seafood, which is precisely what the nine-metre one does. Only the ambition differs.

It has been associated with the seafood business at 212 Kennedy Drive for a long time, currently a restaurant, and it sits on private commercial frontage rather than public ground.

A modest prawn, doing an honest job, permanently overshadowed. There is something quite likeable about it.

Scale aside, it has the better address. Kennedy Drive is a working local street rather than a highway approach, so this prawn is seen mostly by people who live nearby – which is a different and arguably more durable kind of landmark.