STORY

What makes a Big Thing a Big Thing?

Where does an oversized object become a roadside attraction? Is a giant sculpture different from a monument? And does the object actually need to be bigger than the real thing?
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By Project Big Things Editorial
Updated 26 October 2026 · Facts checked 26 October 2026
AI assistance: AI tools assisted with research and drafting. The Publisher and Editor reviewed, fact-checked and approved the article. How we work
A banana several metres long is a Big Thing.
That seems straightforward enough.
A strawberry the size of a basketball is bigger than an ordinary strawberry. But is it a Big Thing?
Probably not.
A life-sized blue whale would be enormous – considerably larger than most giant bananas – but it would still be a life-sized whale. Does that count?
And what happens when the object isn't fibreglass fruit at all, but an important sculpture, a monument to a local industry, or an entire building shaped like the thing it sells?
Welcome to one of the surprisingly difficult questions in the world of enormous roadside objects.
What actually makes a Big Thing a Big Thing?

Nobody owns the definition

There is no international authority deciding what can and cannot be called a Big Thing.
The term describes a loose family of oversized objects, especially those associated with roadside commerce, local identity and tourism. Some are advertisements. Others are artworks, memorials, architectural curiosities or community landmarks.
Australian historian Amy Clarke has investigated this problem more thoroughly than most.
In a 2024 paper published in the Journal of Material Culture, Clarke examined the history and defining characteristics of Big Things, drawing on research into thousands of examples across Australia, Canada and the United States.
Her starting point was revealing: there is no universally accepted definition of the phenomenon.
That might seem surprising when the classic examples are so recognisable. The Big Banana at Coffs Harbour, enormous prawns, giant fish, oversized boots and colossal vegetables all look as though they belong to the same extended family.
But once we try to write rules that include everything that obviously belongs, while excluding everything that doesn't, the problems begin.

Bigger than the real thing isn't enough

One apparently sensible test is whether the object is larger than whatever it represents.
A six-metre banana passes.
A giant strawberry passes.
An enlarged boot passes.
But Clarke identifies a fundamental problem with that approach.
A strawberry the size of a basketball is much larger than a normal strawberry, yet hardly qualifies as a spectacular roadside colossus.
Meanwhile, a life-sized representation of an already enormous animal might dominate the surrounding landscape without being enlarged at all.
The difference is between something that is naturally large and something deliberately made extraordinary through exaggeration.
For classic Big Things, it isn't enough to increase an object's dimensions. The enlargement must be sufficiently conspicuous to transform our normal understanding of it.
We recognise a banana immediately. We know roughly how big a banana should be. An enormous banana violates that expectation.
A whale, on the other hand, is supposed to be enormous.
This is why scale matters as much as size.
A Big Thing generally depends on a recognisable subject being reproduced at a scale that is spectacularly out of proportion to the original.
There is no universal minimum height, and there probably shouldn't be one. A three-metre paperclip might make a stronger Big Thing than a ten-metre tree.
It isn't simply how much space an object occupies. It's how dramatically it departs from the scale we expect.

The roadside connection

The classic Big Thing has another important characteristic: it was made to be noticed.
Many early examples were commercial objects, intended to interrupt the otherwise fleeting attention of passing motorists.
As car ownership expanded and highway travel became an increasingly important part of everyday life, roadside businesses faced a straightforward problem.
How could they persuade somebody travelling at speed to stop?
A large sign might work.
An entire building shaped like a product could work even better.
The United States National Park Service documents this tradition through landmarks such as the Big Duck on Long Island, New York.
Built in 1930–31 as a poultry shop, the building itself was shaped like an enormous duck. Its unusual architecture made the business unmistakable to approaching motorists.
Australia's Big Things flourished particularly from the 1960s onwards. The Big Banana opened at Coffs Harbour in 1964, and other communities and businesses adopted oversized landmarks to celebrate local products, attract visitors and distinguish themselves from neighbouring towns.
But roadside placement is a historical characteristic, not an absolute rule.
The Big Carrot at Ohakune in New Zealand is a useful illustration. Originally installed in 1984, it now anchors Carrotland Adventure Park, surrounded by other oversized vegetables.
It remains a Big Thing despite becoming part of a purpose-built visitor destination.
An object can also be encountered in a town square, park, museum grounds or public plaza.
What matters is its relationship with the public. Big Things are generally intended to be seen, recognised and encountered by people beyond their owners or creators.
The roadside remains important, but the phenomenon has outgrown the road.

Is a Big Thing a sculpture?

Usually, yes.
But the words describe different characteristics.
A sculpture is a type of artistic or physical object. A Big Thing is a cultural category that describes, among other things, the transformation of familiar subjects through exaggerated scale.
An oversized fibreglass prawn is a sculpture.
So is a giant bronze seed pod.
But not every large sculpture becomes a Big Thing.
Consider an abstract steel sculpture thirty metres high. Its size may be extraordinary, but there is no familiar everyday object whose proportions have been transformed. The work may belong more naturally to monumental sculpture than to the classic Big Things tradition.
Now consider an enormous bronze representation of an ordinary household object.
That brings us much closer.
The distinction becomes especially interesting in the work of artists such as Claes Oldenburg, whose enlarged everyday objects demonstrate how closely roadside novelty and serious public art can resemble one another.
The difference is not simply whether a professional artist was involved or whether the work belongs in a gallery.
It may depend on its subject, purpose, location and the way people encounter it.
Australia's Big Coins at the Royal Australian Mint offer an example from the public-art side of the family. They are recognisable everyday objects enlarged into public sculptures.
A Big Thing can therefore be a serious artwork.
Being deliberately entertaining does not make it less artistic. And being artistically significant does not prevent it from being a Big Thing.

When does a Big Thing become a monument?

Sometimes it is a monument from the beginning.
A monument is generally defined by its commemorative purpose. It may recognise an individual, an event, an industry, an achievement or something significant to a community.
That means an oversized object can serve several roles simultaneously.
The Big Axe at Kew, New South Wales, erected in 1979, recognises the timber industry's importance to the surrounding district.
Physically, it is a sculpture.
Culturally, it commemorates an industry central to local history.
For passing travellers, it is a roadside attraction.
And because an ordinary tool has been reproduced at an extraordinary scale, it fits comfortably within the Big Things tradition.
Those classifications aren't competing with one another. They describe different aspects of the same landmark.
Nor does something need to have been built as a monument to become one.
A commercial object can acquire new meaning over time. A giant advertisement may become so familiar to residents that its removal would feel like the loss of a local landmark.
Its original purpose and its later significance can be quite different.
Big Things are particularly interesting because they often outlive the businesses or commercial circumstances that created them.
What began as an attempt to sell something can eventually become part of a community's identity.

Can a building be a Big Thing?

Absolutely.
In fact, some of the most historically important examples are buildings.
The Big Duck on Long Island illustrates this perfectly.
It wasn't simply an oversized duck beside a shop.
It was the shop.
Architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour subsequently used the Big Duck to illustrate a distinction between buildings whose entire form communicates their purpose and more conventional buildings that communicate through attached signs and decoration.
The example became so influential that architects adopted the term duck for buildings whose symbolic form dominates their design.
Australia has its own examples.
The Big Banana incorporates a passage through the structure. The Big Merino at Goulburn is a giant sheep with internal spaces. Lithgow's Big Miner's Lamp forms part of a visitor-information-centre building.
These aren't merely sculptures beside buildings.
They are structures in which architecture and oversized representation become inseparable.
The distinction matters because a strict requirement that Big Things must be freestanding statues would exclude an important part of their history.
Sometimes the building is the attraction.

Does a Big Thing have to be funny?

No.
Although humour is undeniably part of the appeal of many examples.
Big Things are often described as kitsch. Some were cheaply constructed, built by local tradespeople rather than professional sculptors, or designed primarily for advertising.
Others are technically accomplished works, carefully commissioned artworks or significant examples of architecture.
There is no reason an object must be badly made, deliberately comic or artistically unsophisticated to qualify.
Nor must it have a light-hearted subject.
An enormous industrial tool can communicate pride in a town's working history. A large animal sculpture might celebrate a region's wildlife or agricultural heritage. A giant everyday object can simultaneously be playful and meaningful.
Humour may emerge from the absurdity of the scale rather than from the creator's intention.
The important characteristic is not silliness.
It is the transformation of something recognisable into something extraordinary.

A strict definition – and a broader family

At this point, it helps to distinguish between two overlapping ideas.
The first is the classic Big Thing.
This is the form most closely associated with roadside giants: an oversized, three-dimensional representation of a familiar object, animal or figure, deliberately enlarged to attract attention.
Clarke's scholarly work provides an important foundation for understanding this narrower tradition, including the significance of scale, subject matter, construction and historical context.
The second is the broader family of oversized landmarks people travel to see.
Project Big Things documents both.
Its catalogue includes the classic roadside giants but also novelty architecture, giant characters and mascots, public art, monumental sculptures and selected industrial or civic landmarks.
That broader scope is deliberate.
It does not mean every large object qualifies. A tall office tower is not automatically a Big Thing. Neither is every memorial, industrial installation or monumental work of art.
But it does recognise that the boundaries between categories are not always clear.
A giant mining tool may be a monument and a roadside attraction.
An enormous sculptural animal may be public art and a local tourism icon.
A building shaped like a familiar object may be architecture and a Big Thing.
The Project Big Things categories reflect these overlaps. Rather than pretending every object fits one narrow definition, they provide several ways to explore a larger and more varied landscape.
The catalogue's central interest is in deliberately conspicuous, unusually large objects and structures that have become destinations, landmarks or sources of local identity.
Some fit the classic definition precisely.
Others sit near its edges.
Both can be worth discovering.

So what makes a Big Thing a Big Thing?

Not size alone.
Not fibreglass.
Not being Australian.
Not having the word “Big” in its name.
And not necessarily standing beside a highway.
The clearest examples combine three characteristics: a recognisable subject, an extraordinary alteration of scale and a conspicuous public presence.
They turn something whose ordinary proportions we understand into something that makes us look again.
But Big Things also have histories, purposes and relationships with the places around them. They can be advertising, architecture, sculpture, public art or monuments – sometimes several at once.
The boundaries will always be a little uncertain.
Perhaps that is appropriate.
After all, nobody invented the Big Thing by writing a definition.
They just built something far larger than necessary and waited for the cars to stop.

Sources

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Roadside Attractions, US National Park Service. Accessed 26 October 2026.
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The Big Duck, National Register of Historic Places, US National Park Service. Accessed 26 October 2026.
•
What counts as a Big Thing?, Project Big Things. Accessed 26 October 2026.
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The Big Axe, Kew, Project Big Things. Accessed 26 October 2026.

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