Wardandi Boodja

Bunbury, Western Australia, Australia

Public art

✓

Current

Checked by Project Big Things · Sep 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A five-and-a-half-metre corten-steel bust representing a Noongar face on Bunbury’s Koombana Bay foreshore.

Before you stop

The foreshore car park may close or have restricted access for major events; follow current City signage.

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.

A free Explorer account reveals the exact recommended arrival point.

Wardandi Boodja

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

33.32030° S, 115.64624° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Five and a half metres of corten steel, on the Koombana Bay foreshore, representing a Noongar face.

The City of Bunbury describes Wardandi Boodja as seeking to merge traditional sculpture with advanced fabrication technology to create a contemporary artwork paying deep respect to the Noongar people. It was created by Nicole and Alex Mickle with significant local Indigenous community involvement, and the city treats it as a headline work in its public art collection.

That description of method is worth taking seriously. A five-and-a-half-metre bust in corten steel is almost certainly built from digitally derived contour plates – a technique that produces a face out of stacked or faceted steel sections and reads as both a portrait and a topography. Boodja means country in Noongar, and a face made of layered land is a considered piece of design rather than a coincidence.

This entry states the city's own description and goes no further. What the work means, and how it should be understood, belongs to the Noongar people who were involved in making it.

Bunbury has invested unusually heavily in public art for a regional city. It now holds more than forty large-scale murals by national and international artists, and a related programme transformed twenty electrical boxes in the CBD into characters painted by professional artists working with local students.

Koombana Bay is the city's principal foreshore, and the sculpture stands on it, free and open.

The decade it belongs to were left unrecorded.

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PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

The City of Bunbury currently describes Wardandi Boodja as a headline work in its public-art collection, created by Nicole and Alex Mickle with significant local Indigenous community involvement.

ACCESS

Wardandi Boodja stands on the public Koombana Bay foreshore at Anchorage Cove. City of Bunbury identifies it as the foreshore’s headline public artwork. The former two-decimal PBT point was too coarse and sat well west of the foreshore activity area; production now uses a map-checked approximate Koombana foreshore anchor near the sculpture precinct, without claiming an exact sculpture centroid. For drivers, use the public Koombana Beach/Foreshore car park on Anchorage Cove and continue on foot. Event-day closures can affect the foreshore car park, so follow current City signage.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

Find another Big Thing nearby

✓

Current

Fergus the Bull

Dardanup / Ferguson Valley, Western Australia

A four-metre carved wooden bull and long-running mascot for the Ferguson Valley.

Public art

8.5 km away

✓ Recommended arrival recorded

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

City of Bunbury – Koombana Bay family access and parking

City of Bunbury · recorded 2026-09-11

Confirms plentiful free parking in the Koombana Bay precinct and pedestrian access to the foreshore playground/activity area.

Government

City of Bunbury – SkyFest 2026 Koombana Foreshore Car Park

City of Bunbury · recorded 2026-09-11

Explicitly names the Koombana Foreshore Car Park and documents event-day closure conditions.

Government

City of Bunbury Public Art Collection

City of Bunbury · recorded 2026-08-22

Government

DataGemba – Koombana Beach Car Park coordinate

DataGemba · recorded 2026-09-11

Maps Koombana Beach Car Park, Anchorage Cove, at -33.3203131, 115.6460438; used with City confirmation of the named public car park.

Other

Pacer – Koombana Bay Foreshore mapped precinct

Pacer · recorded 2026-09-11

Maps the Koombana Bay Foreshore activity area around -33.3206, 115.6462 and records multiple parking lots; used only as an approximate sculpture-precinct anchor, not an exact Wardandi Boodja centroid.

Other

Visit Bunbury Geographe – Culture Seekers

Visit Bunbury Geographe · recorded 2026-08-22

Tourism

What we're still checking

Exact sculpture coordinate has not yet been independently verified.

Open-licence image search completed 24 August 2026. No defensible reusable image with file-level commercial-use provenance was verified in the completed Commons, government/open-licence and archival/open-collection sweep.

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