Big Thorny Devil – Australian National Botanic Gardens

Acton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Public art

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Current

Checked by Project Big Things · Sep 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A larger-than-life thorny devil sculpture in the Red Centre Garden at the Australian National Botanic Gardens.

Before you stop

Parking fees and Gardens opening hours apply; do not attempt to drive to the Red Centre Garden sculpture itself.

Venue entrance

Private to your Passport.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Recommended arrival available

Attraction entrance

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Big Thorny Devil – Australian National Botanic Gardens

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

Site-level location · 35.2744° S, 149.1076° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A three-metre thorny devil in the Red Centre Garden, which is exactly where one should be.

The Australian National Botanic Gardens at Acton tell visitors to meet the thorny devil sculpture in that garden, and fabricator documentation identifies the commissioned work as a three-metre-long steel-reinforced fibreglass sculpture.

The animal is one of the strangest things in Australia. A thorny devil is a small desert lizard, perhaps twenty centimetres long, covered in conical spines, with a false head on the back of its neck that it presents to predators. Most remarkably, it drinks through its skin: fine channels between the scales draw water by capillary action from damp sand or dew and carry it to the corners of its mouth. It eats almost nothing but ants, several thousand a day.

Enlarging one fifteen times is therefore the only way most people will ever see how it is built. At life size the spines and the channelled scales are a texture; at three metres they become structure.

The Red Centre Garden is itself an argument. A botanic garden in Canberra recreating the plant communities of central Australia – sand, spinifex, desert shrubs – is making the case that the arid interior is a flora worth studying rather than an absence, and the lizard is the animal that belongs in it.

The gardens are free and open daily, and the sculpture is on the public trail.

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PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

The Australian National Botanic Gardens currently tells visitors to meet its thorny devil sculpture in the Red Centre Garden. Fabricator documentation identifies the commissioned work as a three-metre-long steel-reinforced fibreglass sculpture.

ACCESS

The Big Thorny Devil is inside the Australian National Botanic Gardens Red Centre Garden. Drive to the Gardens’ main entrance on Clunies Ross Street and use the onsite main car park, then continue on foot through the Gardens. Parks Australia confirms the Clunies Ross Street entrance and substantial paid onsite parking; an independently geotagged entrance photograph places the main entrance at approximately -35.279700, 149.110500. Production uses this as the vehicle arrival/entrance point, not as the Thorny Devil location or a parking-bay centroid.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

Find another Big Thing nearby

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Current

Big Vase – Vessel of (Horti)cultural Plenty

Canberra City, Australian Capital Territory

Warren Langley’s Vessel of (Horti)cultural Plenty is a large illuminated vessel filled with abstract flowers.

Public art

1.7 km away

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

Australian National Botanic Gardens – Red Centre Garden

Parks Australia / Australian National Botanic Gardens · recorded 2026-08-23

Current first-party visitor page explicitly identifies the thorny devil sculpture in the Red Centre Garden.

Government

Natureworks – Giant Thorny Devil

Natureworks Australia · recorded 2026-08-23

Fabricator documentation says the 3 m sculpture was commissioned by the Australian National Botanic Gardens for the Red Centre exhibit.

Official

Wikimedia Commons – Australian National Botanic Gardens entrance

Wikimedia Commons · recorded 2026-09-11

Geotagged photograph records the Gardens entrance camera position at -35.279700, 149.110500; used with current Parks Australia entrance guidance as a map-checked arrival point.

Community

What we're still checking

Open-licence image search completed 24 August 2026. No defensible reusable image with file-level commercial-use provenance was verified in the completed Commons, government/open-licence and archival/open-collection sweep.

Parks Australia confirms the ANBG main visitor car park and Clunies Ross Street entrance, but the previously stored destination is a general Gardens centroid rather than a verified vehicle-arrival coordinate.

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