A 14-metre rocket landmark in Kirkby Park, Moree, launched in 2009 to mark the International Year of Astronomy and the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing.
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This takes you to the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 29.4681° S, 149.8423° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
There are two rockets in the park, and the record insists you do not confuse them.
The fourteen-metre Big Rocket was launched in Kirkby Park in 2009, marking both the International Year of Astronomy and the fortieth anniversary of the first Moon landing. An older and much smaller rocket from 1972 also remains in the park, and Moree Plains Shire Council promotes Kirkby Park as home to the fourteen-metre structure.
The 1972 original is the more interesting object. Playground rockets were a genuine Australian fashion in the decade after Apollo – climbable steel frames in council parks all over the country, most of them long since removed on safety grounds. That a town kept its original and then built a far larger successor thirty-seven years later is a rare piece of continuity.
Two anniversaries in one object is also unusually specific. Most commemorative Big Things mark a local centenary or an industry; this one marks a United Nations observance and an American spaceflight, neither of which has anything to do with Moree.
Though there is a genuine local link. Australia's role in relaying the Apollo 11 broadcast – Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes – means the Moon landing is a real part of Australian technical history, and inland New South Wales is where the dishes were.
Moree itself is artesian bore-bath country on the Gwydir, a major cotton and grain centre, and a town with a hard and important civil-rights history: the 1965 Freedom Ride confronted the segregation of its municipal swimming pool.
The rocket's maker and materials are not recorded here.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Moree Plains Shire Council currently promotes Kirkby Park as the home of the 14-metre Big Rocket. The park also retains an older, much smaller 1972 rocket, so the two structures should not be confused.
ACCESS
Navigate to Kirkby Park at the junction of Balo and Frome Streets. Moree Plains Shire Council currently identifies the park as home of the Big Rocket, and NSW Government lists a car park. Use the public park parking on arrival. Any closure or restriction applying to climbing/using a rocket does not make the surrounding park an unsafe driving destination.
