Big Sausage – Tuatapere

The fork is the detail that makes the sculpture work. A three-metre sausage lying on the ground would read as an odd cylinder; speared on an upright fork it becomes unmistakably food, and slightly absurd, and photographs well – which for an object gifted by a breakfast radio show is the entire brief.

It has since moved from its original town display site. Current specialist research, cross-checked with Tuatapere locals, places it outside the restaurant at Tui Base Camp on McFeely Street. When it moved, and why, does not appear in the record; a town of this size rarely minutes such things, and the knowledge stays with the people who watched it happen.

Tuatapere sits in western Southland at the edge of Fiordland, on the road toward the Hump Ridge Track, and is a small place with a long way between it and anywhere else. It is exactly the sort of town that benefits from a large sausage.