Giant Planisphere – Lake Yealering

The Shire of Wickepin installed a concrete viewing platform, the Giant Planisphere and a Stargazing for Beginners sign at Lake Yealering as part of its astrotourism infrastructure, and Astrotourism WA continues to promote the planisphere as a visitor experience.

That programme is one of the more interesting rural tourism ideas in Australia. Western Australia's Wheatbelt has almost no light pollution, enormous horizons and very dark skies, and the state has been systematically building small pieces of infrastructure – platforms, signs, star maps – in towns that had nothing else to offer a night-time visitor. It costs very little and gives people a reason to stay after dark, which is the hard part for any inland town.

The Shire covers 2,042 square kilometres across Wickepin, Yealering, Harrismith, Tincurrin and Toolibin, with spring wildflowers, walk trails and scenic lakes.

A large interactive instrument rather than a sculpture is a genuinely unusual entry here, and among the most useful.