... the story behind australias' "big things"
in terms of tourism, australias' rural areas have long fought a losing battle against the sophistication of our capital cities. i think most australians assume that this is because all tourists are spoiled lazy sods who only want to go to posh hotels where somebody will wash their socks.
but this is not true !.
the real problem seems to be that australias' country areas have, by some bizarre unspoken agreement, apparently decided to rectify the tourist shortage by incessantly building ridiculously oversized fibreglass replicas of almost anything they can think of.
(the plan being that lots of people will want to come and look at these big things. nobody knows why anybody thinks this).
and clearly, this "plan" has not had the desired effect.
i can find nobody who can explain to me how it happened. i wish i could. i wish i could find somebody to blame for the virus that spawned some fifty-five (yes, 55) "big" things and counting.
it may be marginally less torturous if they at least had original names. but they don't. (that's part of the conspiracy). no matter how many times the "thing"s' original size is exaggerted in the "replica", it's always called the same thing. big.
"the big ....". not giant. not huge. not enormous or monolithic or any other of the innumerable suitable words. big. they're big.
(it drives me insane. i mean, would you call a 21-foot long banana "big" ?).
despite my revulsion, these things continue to spawn (apparently unaided) from the bowels of the earth.
we have a big worm, a big chook, a big mushroom, a big prawn, a big rum bottle, a big gumboot, a big boxing crocodile, a big redback, a big cow, a big ned kelly, a big shell, a big bull, a big oyster, a big nut, a big stockwhip, a big tasmanian devil and a big pheasant ...
(a pheasant ?????)
...a big galah, a big scotsman, a big orange, mandarin, pineapple apple, mango and 2 big bananas, a big crocodile, a big ram, a big winch, a big miner, a big rocking horse, a big roo, big cod, big trout, big marlin, 2 big barramundi, and 3 big guitars (one playable).
to qualify as a "big thing", the object must outsize it's model by at least 200%, or must be at least twice average human height. it must have a "genuine" appearance (ie: it can't be a joke. it actually has to be a true replica).
a "big thing" must also be a structure that is "dominant" of it's landscape and is easily accessible to the public. it should also have local or cultural relevance.
although nobody will ever be able to convince me that australia should consider these "big things" an achievement in anything other than doggedly clinging to a silly theme, i will grant them that they do give us a certain something unique to offer the aficionado of large fibreglass vegetables and poultry.
(but from near-space this place must look like an island guarded by a master race of giant shiny fruits and fish with facial expressions).
australia. please don't come here. we're all barking mad.