Olive the Big Cow – Hāwera

That prominence has made her a target. She has been vandalised twice: in August 2019 somebody removed her tail and one teat with a power tool, and in 2024 she was attacked again, on that occasion by protesters marking Bobby Calf Awareness Day. The second incident placed her squarely in a live public argument about dairy farming practice, which is an unusual position for a roadside sculpture to occupy.

It is worth being straightforward about that rather than leaving it out. Olive is not a neutral novelty. She is the visible face of a very large processing plant, and because she is the most legible symbol of the industry in the region, she attracts the feeling – affectionate and otherwise – that the industry itself attracts. Very few Big Things carry any political weight at all. This one does.

RNZ confirmed in 2025 that she remains outside Fonterra Whareroa, repaired and in place.

The wider point is about what happens when an object becomes a symbol. Olive was put up as a piece of plant signage, and thirty years of standing at the gate turned her into the recognised face of the district's largest industry. Symbols attract argument in a way signs do not, and the vandalism reflects the promotion more than any change in the object.

She also remains, straightforwardly, a landmark. South Taranaki residents give directions by her, visitors photograph her, and the plant behind her processes an enormous share of the region's milk. All of that is true at once.