Perla the Potato – Ohakune

The potato is the most quietly appropriate of them. Ohakune sits on volcanic soils on the southern side of Ruapehu that grow root crops exceptionally well, and while the carrot gets the publicity, potatoes are a substantial part of what the district actually produces. Adding one is a small correction to the record.

The naming convention across the group is doing real work. Each vegetable gets a name and a personality rather than a label, and children remember names. A park with five named characters is a place to return to; a park with five accurate vegetable replicas is a display you look at once.

What Ohakune has assembled is unusual in this catalogue. Nearly every town with a Big Thing has exactly one, maintains it, and stops. This town took a donated television prop from 1984 and spent four decades building a cast around it, ending with something in the order of 13,000 visitors a month and a national Landmark of the Year award in 2023.

No record survives of any figures for its size, the year or the maker.