This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
34.82108° S, 138.89180° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
You can climb inside it, and they give you a certificate for a dollar when you reach the top.
The Big Rocking Horse opened at Gumeracha in 1981, stands 18.3 metres and weighs around twenty-five tonnes, and is claimed by its owners as the largest in the world. What separates it from almost every other oversized object in Australia is that ascending it is the attraction: a series of steps and vertical ladders leads up through the structure to three viewing platforms, the highest giving a view across the Adelaide Hills.
That changes the nature of the thing entirely. Most Big Things are looked at for thirty seconds and photographed. This one is a climb, with a mild element of nerve involved – vertical ladders inside a hollow horse are not for everyone – and the certificate at the end is a small, cheap and very effective piece of showmanship.
The engineering is correspondingly serious. Twenty-five tonnes carrying members of the public up its interior is a structure under real load, subject to real inspection, and closer to a small building than to a sculpture.
It anchors a larger complex at Torrens Valley Road including a seven-acre animal park, mini golf, a café and playgrounds, and it has been operating continuously for more than forty years – which for a family attraction competing with everything else in the Adelaide Hills is a considerable run.
Because the horse sits within a commercial complex, seeing it up close means going in.
It also sits in a category almost nobody else occupies: a Big Thing with a genuine safety brief. Climbing structures carry obligations that giant fruit does not, and forty years without that becoming a story is its own quiet achievement.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
The Big Rocking Horse is an 18.3-metre rocking horse at Gumeracha, one of Australia's best-known Big Things. The complex includes a horse climb, animal park, café, playgrounds and shop, open seven days a week at 452 Torrens Valley Road.
ACCESS
Navigate to the Big Rocking Horse complex and use the visitor parking. Access to climb the horse is subject to venue conditions and fire-danger closures.
