Wild on West Giant Animal Collection

Collections of this kind sit awkwardly in a catalogue built around individual objects. A single giant animal in a town is a landmark – it belongs to the place, everyone navigates by it, and it accumulates local meaning. Twenty giant animals on one private property is something different: an attraction, with an admission arrangement, where the objects are exhibits rather than landmarks.

That distinction matters for how these things survive. A town's Big Thing is defended by the town. A private collection depends entirely on one family continuing to want it, and when they stop, the whole set disperses or goes at once.

Australia and New Zealand have a scattering of these – Fairy Park at Anakie in Victoria, the Te Poi tavern's concrete menagerie, the Mulherin Park figures at Mackay. They are consistently the most vulnerable entries in this collection and the least documented.

West Mooreville is just inland from Burnie in Tasmania's north-west.

How many animals there are, who made them and when the attraction opened are not recorded, and this record has only the council listing behind it.