The Big Furphy

Kialla / Shepparton, Victoria, Australia

Roadside giants

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Current

Checked by Project Big Things · Aug 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A giant-scale Furphy water cart displayed at MOVE in Kialla, celebrating one of Shepparton’s best-known industrial icons.

P
Parking
onsite

Private to your Passport.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Recommended arrival available

Other

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The Big Furphy

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

Site-level location · 36.4384° S, 145.3887° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

To say something is a furphy is to say it is a rumour – and the word comes from this object.

John Furphy invented his water tank at Shepparton in 1878: a cast-iron-ended cylinder sealed with heat-shrunk iron bands, mounted on a horse-drawn cart. It was a genuinely good piece of agricultural engineering and it went everywhere in rural Australia. It also went to war. Furphy carts supplied water to Australian troops in the First World War, and because the cart was where men gathered and waited, it was where the talk happened. The unreliable news you picked up at the water cart became known as a furphy, and the word entered Australian English and stayed there.

So this is one of the few Big Things whose subject is also a word.

The sculpture is a Furphy water cart at 2.3 times the size of the original, standing at the entrance to MOVE – the Museum of Vehicle Evolution – at 7723 Goulburn Valley Highway in Kialla, just south of Shepparton. It was revealed in December 2021 as part of the refurbishment that turned the former Shepparton Motor Museum into MOVE, and the museum holds the Furphy family's own collection among its holdings.

The scale factor is worth noticing. Most Big Things go for ten or twenty times life size, because the joke is dislocation. This one is only a bit over twice actual size, which means it still reads as a water cart rather than as a cartoon of one – big enough to stop you, close enough to the real thing to be looked at as an object rather than a gag.

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PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

Current Furphy first-party material confirms the 2.3-times-scale Big Furphy Water Cart stands at the entrance to MOVE and Furphy Museum at 7723 Goulburn Valley Highway. Monument Australia independently maps the MOVE site at approximately -36.438397, 145.388727.

ACCESS

Navigate to MOVE / Furphy Museum at 7723 Goulburn Valley Highway and use the museum parking area. The Big Furphy stands at the entrance/parking precinct and should be approached within the visitor site rather than from the highway.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

Find another Big Thing nearby

Current – limited access

Big Ernie

Shepparton East, Victoria

A giant tractor-salesman figure standing at the Konigs agricultural machinery dealership in Shepparton East.

Roadside giants

7.0 km away

✓ Recommended arrival recorded

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

Brown Signs – Big Furphy

Brown Signs · recorded 2026-08-22

Current specialist documentation identifying the giant Furphy water cart, unveiled in 2021 and displayed in the MOVE parking area.

Community

Furphy Museum – Big Furphy Water Cart

Furphy · recorded 2026-08-23

Current first-party museum page confirms the 2.3x Big Furphy stands at the entrance to MOVE and provides the visitor address.

Official

Monument Australia – Furphy Water Cart marker at MOVE

Monument Australia · recorded 2026-08-23

Maps the MOVE site at approximately -36.438397, 145.388727 and confirms the visitor address.

Community

MOVE – About MOVE

MOVE – Museum of Vehicle Evolution · recorded 2026-08-22

Current first-party evidence for MOVE and its Furphy collection at Kialla.

Official

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.

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