This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
26.34143° S, 152.73013° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Matilda winked. That was the trick that made her famous: at the opening of the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games, the thirteen-metre kangaroo rolled into the stadium, winked at eighty thousand people and a television audience across the Commonwealth, and opened her pouch to let children come bounding out.
For a certain generation of Australians she is one of the most vivid images of the decade – a mechanical mascot that actually worked, at a Games that Brisbane still measures itself by.
After the Games she went through several relocations, which is the usual fate of an object built for one fortnight and then found to be much loved and extremely large. She now stands permanently in the car park of the Traveston service centre on the Bruce Highway north of Gympie, where anyone driving to the Sunshine Coast passes within a few metres of her.
She no longer moves. The wink and the pouch are both fixed, and what remains is the shell of a machine that was once the most animated Big Thing in the country.
That is worth stating without sentimentality, because it is the ordinary fate of mechanised attractions. The moving parts are the first thing to fail and the least likely to be repaired, since they need maintenance that a car park cannot justify. What survives is the silhouette.
One point of confusion worth clearing up: several Queensland towns have giant kangaroos, and Charleville's is separately catalogued. This is the original Games mascot, and the distinction matters, because only one of them ever winked at the Commonwealth.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
After several relocations, the original Matilda is displayed at the Traveston Service Centre at 2028 Old Bruce Highway, Coles Creek.
ACCESS
Navigate to the Traveston Service Centre public vehicle destination at 2028 Old Bruce Highway, Coles Creek, rather than to Matilda’s sculpture coordinate itself.
