The Big Rolling Pin

What makes it a good object is the mismatch between the tool and the scale. A rolling pin is one of the most domestic implements there is – a wooden cylinder for flattening pastry on a kitchen bench – and rendering one at the length of a semi-trailer is genuinely absurd in a way a giant loaf or a giant cake would not be.

Roof mounting is the right decision too. A rolling pin lying horizontally at ground level would read as a pipe. Along a roofline, silhouetted, with the handles visible at each end, it is unmistakable.

Wodonga sits on the Murray opposite Albury, at the New South Wales border on the Hume Highway – one of the busiest interurban corridors in the country. A bakery in that position has an enormous passing trade of people who have been driving for hours and are thinking about food.

Bakeries are well represented among the enlarged-product Big Things: the loaf at Manaia in Taranaki, the jam jars at Glen Aplin, the giant pie on a truck at Bilpin.

Access to the bakery follows the business. The rolling pin, being on the roof, does not.