What counts as a Big Thing?

A Big Thing is something oversized, unmissable, and usually built on purpose to make you pull over. That covers a lot of ground: classic roadside giants (the big banana, the big prawn, the big everything else), novelty architecture you can walk into, large-scale public art and monumental sculpture, giant mascots and characters, and the odd industrial or civic landmark that grew into a local icon over the decades. A handful of listings are historical – removed, relocated, or long gone – kept on record because they were real and people still ask about them.

Some of these are exactly what you would picture. Others stretch the idea in ways that surprised us too – a mining monument, a mobile sculpture trailer, a town's entire collection of public art in one entry. That is intentional. The interesting edge cases are part of what makes this catalogue worth exploring rather than a predictable list of fibreglass fruit.