Maddie & Mike – Southport

Southport, Queensland, Australia

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Public art

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Current

Recently confirmed · Sep 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A 2.5-metre public-art sculpture of a girl and her teddy bear in Southport Broadwater Parklands, commissioned by Gold Coast City Council and created by John Cox.

Before you stop

Requires crossing the Gold Coast Highway on foot -- use the signed pedestrian crossing rather than crossing mid-block.

Parking on site

Private to your Passport.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Recommended arrival available

Onsite parking

This takes you to the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

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Maddie & Mike – Southport

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

27.97029° S, 153.41973° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A girl and her teddy bear, two and a half metres tall, commissioned by a city council in 2010.

John Cox's public-art archive confirms the Gold Coast City Council commission, and park mapping and visitor guides continue to use Maddie & Mike as a landmark in Broadwater Parklands.

Being used as a landmark is the test that matters. A sculpture people navigate by – meet me at Maddie and Mike – has entered a place's working vocabulary in a way that most public art never does, which is precisely the quality this catalogue is interested in.

The subject is unusual for its scale. Almost everything oversized is an object, an animal or a piece of produce; a human child with a soft toy is intimate material, and enlarging it produces something quite different from a giant fruit. At two and a half metres the girl is roughly the height of an adult and a half – big enough to be striking, small enough not to be monstrous.

Cox has a second work in the same parklands: Blue Perspective, a three-metre blue surfer girl made for the SWELL Sculpture Festival and later bought by the city. Two figurative sculptures by the same artist in one park, both of girls, is a coherent body of work rather than a collection of separate commissions.

Broadwater Parklands is the Gold Coast's major foreshore public space at Southport, redeveloped in stages from around 2009 – which places both sculptures in the same civic project.

The materials are not recorded here.

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PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

John Cox’s current public-art archive confirms the 2010 Gold Coast City Council commission, while current/recent park mapping and visitor guides continue to use Maddie & Mike as a landmark in Broadwater Parklands.

ACCESS

Park at Carey Park, the City of Gold Coast's metered 24/7 carpark on the Gold Coast Highway, directly across the road from the South Lawn/'The Hill' area of Broadwater Parklands. Cross at the pedestrian crossing and walk a short distance to Maddie & Mike, distinct from the other Broadwater sculpture (Blue Perspective) which sits about 1.2 km further north near a different carpark.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

Find another Big Thing nearby

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Current

Geckomania

Southport, Queensland

A group of oversized gecko sculptures in Southport’s Broadwater Parklands, commonly known as Geckomania.

Public art

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0.3 km away

✓ Recommended arrival recorded

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

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