This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
29.00870° S, 134.75802° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
There is a steel tree on the hill beside the Big Winch, and it exists because a man wanted his children to know what a tree looked like.
Coober Pedy had no trees. Bob Amorosi built one out of twisted metal salvaged from a freight truck fire about two hundred kilometres south of the town, so that his kids could have the experience of a tree in a place that had none.
That is one of the most affecting origin stories in this entire catalogue, and it sits a few metres from the Big Winch itself – a giant mining winch built by Claus Wirries in the early 1970s on a hill overlooking the town, and a popular attraction and meeting place for visitors and locals ever since.
The winch is the right monument for Coober Pedy. This is the opal capital of the world, a town where a very large proportion of the population lives underground in dugouts to escape heat that regularly exceeds forty degrees, and where the landscape is a moonscape of mullock heaps from a century of small-scale mining. A winch is the machine that lifts the dirt out of the shaft – the single most essential piece of equipment in the trade, and the reason any of it is possible.
South Australia tourism confirms the Big Winch remains a current lookout and visitor attraction, with a café and bar and lookout facilities.
A giant winch and a steel tree on the same hill is a fairly complete summary of what Coober Pedy is.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
South Australia tourism confirms the Big Winch remains a current lookout and visitor attraction. The site includes a cafe/bar, car and coach parking, toilets and lookout facilities.
ACCESS
Navigate to Big Winch 360 on Italian Club Road and use the venue car park.
