The Big Smoke

Myrtleford, Victoria, Australia

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Landmarks and monuments

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Historical – no longer at this location

Historical record · Aug 2026

This Big Thing is recorded for its history. It is no longer at this location, so it is not a stop to plan a trip around.

A former giant-cigarette landmark associated with Myrtleford’s tobacco industry and the former Tobacco Cooperative complex.

Private to your Passport.

PLANNING A VISIT?

Not a stop to travel to

This Big Thing is recorded for its history. It is no longer at this location, so it is not a stop to plan a trip around.

The Big Smoke

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Approximate location · 36.562° S, 146.725° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Myrtleford's Big Thing was a chimney painted to look like a cigarette, standing over the town's tobacco-processing complex. It is difficult to imagine it being built today, and that is most of what makes it interesting.

The Ovens Valley around Myrtleford was the centre of Australian tobacco growing for much of the twentieth century, worked heavily by post-war Italian migrant families, and the crop underwrote the district. The processing complex and its cooperative were the industrial heart of the town. Painting the chimney as a giant cigarette was simply naming the product – the same instinct that produced giant bananas and giant prawns elsewhere, applied to what this valley actually grew.

Australian tobacco growing ended. The industry was progressively wound down and the last of it closed in the mid-2000s, taking the reason for the chimney with it. The ABC recorded in 2022 that the Big Cigarette, formerly a chimney in a tobacco plant, had been removed at Myrtleford.

One caution about sources. Some later material still describes the landmark as visible, but that appears to preserve older information rather than to report a current sighting, and the catalogue treats the ABC's account as authoritative. It is retained here as a historical Big Thing only.

It is worth being straightforward about the subject rather than embarrassed by it. This was a monument to a legal agricultural industry that employed a whole valley, put up when that was uncontroversial, and it disappeared along with the industry rather than because of any change in taste. The awkwardness it now carries is a measure of how completely the ground moved underneath it.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

The Big Smoke was a chimney at Myrtleford’s tobacco-processing complex that was painted to resemble a giant cigarette. ABC reporting confirms the landmark was removed after the tobacco industry ended; later material calling it visible is inconsistent and appears to preserve older information. It is therefore retained only as a historical Big Thing.

ACCESS

Historical record only. Do not navigate to the former industrial site expecting to see the Big Smoke.

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