This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 27.4692° S, 153.0002° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
The racquet was returned to the park, which means it had been away.
Frew Park at Milton stands on the site of Milton Courts, for decades Brisbane's principal tennis ground and the venue for Davis Cup ties and Queensland championships before the game moved on. The old grounds were redeveloped, and the giant racquet was brought back and integrated into the new park near the Milton Road frontage as a piece of that heritage.
Queensland's tennis history is deeper than most people outside the state realise. State Library of Queensland material shows the game established here in the nineteenth century – a tennis party at Atherton in 1888, a match in front of the homestead at Warrinilla Station around 1878, the Brisbane Tennis Ground in 1893, couples with racquets beside a court in the Botanic Gardens in 1894, a court under construction at Gaythorne around 1915. Tennis was a homestead and suburban game here long before it was a professional one.
The modern successor is the Queensland Tennis Centre at Tennyson, built on the site of a decommissioned power station, where the Brisbane International is played on Pat Rafter Arena.
So the Milton racquet marks a ground that no longer exists, on the spot where it was.
This is the second giant tennis racquet in the catalogue. The other, at Barellan, is a twenty-to-one replica of Evonne Goolagong Cawley's own Dunlop. Milton's commemorates a place; Barellan's commemorates a person.
The maker's identity and a measured size did not survive into any source.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
