This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 41.5558° S, 146.4524° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
The giant Tasmanian devil at Mole Creek stands at the entrance to Trowunna Wildlife Sanctuary, and it is one of the few Big Things pointing at something genuinely urgent.
Devils are the world's largest surviving carnivorous marsupials, and since the mid-1990s they have been devastated by devil facial tumour disease – a transmissible cancer, one of only a handful known in any species, passed between animals when they bite each other during feeding and mating. Wild populations collapsed across much of Tasmania. Insurance populations and captive breeding became the response, and Trowunna is a long-established sanctuary involved in that work, operating at 1892 Mole Creek Road.
So the sculpture is doing something a fibreglass fruit does not have to. It is the entrance sign for a conservation facility for an animal in trouble, and the scale is not a joke about size – devils are compact, roughly dog-sized animals, and enlarging one makes visible a creature most visitors will otherwise only glimpse asleep in a den box.
It has national standing. Australia Post featured the sculpture in its 2023 Aussie Big Things stamp issue, putting a Mole Creek roadside devil alongside the country's best-known oversized objects.
Mole Creek sits inland at the foot of the Great Western Tiers, on the road toward Cradle Mountain, so most people who pass it are on their way somewhere spectacular. Stopping is the point.
The sculpture's maker, date and dimensions are not established in the record.
There is one caution to carry to any devil encounter. The species is nocturnal, and by day devils mostly sleep, so visitors expecting the snarling animal of the sculpture are frequently disappointed by the reality of a dark shape curled in a box. Sanctuaries generally time feeds and talks to work around that, and it is worth checking before arriving.
The noise, though, is real. The devil's name comes from the sound – a shrieking, coughing, wholly disproportionate racket made over food – and hearing it once explains the entire naming.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Australia Post featured the sculpture in its 2023 Aussie Big Things stamp issue, while Trowunna confirms the sanctuary remains operating at 1892 Mole Creek Road.
ACCESS
The Big Tasmanian Devil stands near the entrance to Trowunna Wildlife Sanctuary. Navigate to the independently mapped sanctuary visitor site at 1892 Mole Creek Road and use its documented car/coach parking, passing the entrance landmark rather than stopping on Mole Creek Road.
