This Big Thing is still here, but public access is limited. Check the access notes for details before visiting.
A classic oversized pumpkin now displayed with Scenic Rim Farmers Market at Beaudesert Fair, after earlier relocations from its former Beaudesert roadside home.
Limited access
Check the access notes for details before visiting
P
Parking
onsite
Access hours apply
onsite
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.
A free Explorer account reveals the exact recommended arrival point.
This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 27.9890° S, 152.9992° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
The Big Pumpkin stood on Brisbane Street in Beaudesert since the late 1950s. In October 2023 the local paper ran the headline that it had left the building.
That makes it one of the older survivors on the register – a fibreglass-era survivor from before the Big Banana, before the tradition had a name – and its removal after some sixty-five years in one spot was genuinely news in the Scenic Rim.
It was not lost. Queensland Tourism now identifies the pumpkin as having found a new home at the Scenic Rim Farmers Market, an independent family-owned grocer operating at Beaudesert Fair on William Street. So the object has moved from a street frontage to a shopping centre tenancy, which resolves an earlier confusion in the record about whether it had gone to Kooralbyn.
The relocation changes what it is. For sixty-five years it was a roadside landmark that people navigated by; it is now a feature of an operating retail business, indoors or in a shopping precinct rather than freestanding on a main street. Anyone travelling on the strength of an old photograph will not find it where the photograph was taken.
A produce market is at least a sympathetic home. The pumpkin is back among fruit and vegetables, which is more than most displaced Big Things manage – the usual destination is a car yard, a storage shed or the tip.
Why it was removed, and who moved it, are not recorded.
A landmark that changes address loses something that cannot be moved with it. Sixty-five years of people saying turn left at the pumpkin does not transfer to a shopping centre tenancy, however carefully the object itself is preserved.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Current Queensland tourism identifies the Big Pumpkin as having found its new home in Scenic Rim Farmers Market. The market is operating at Beaudesert Fair, Shop 10–12, 32–40 William Street.
ACCESS
Visit via Beaudesert Fair during Scenic Rim Farmers Market / centre opening hours and use the shopping-centre customer parking. This is an operating retail setting rather than an unrestricted 24-hour roadside stop.
