Best Quirky Roadside Attractions in Australia

Australia has an entire subculture of oversized fruit, animals and objects built on the side of the highway, and once you start noticing them, it is genuinely hard to stop. These are collectively known as Big Things, and there are well over 150 of them scattered across the country, mostly built between the 1960s and 1990s as a way for small country towns to grab the attention of passing traffic.

I have gone out of my way for more of these than I would like to admit, and there is something genuinely charming about a giant fibreglass banana or a twenty-metre concrete merino sheep looming up out of nowhere on an otherwise empty stretch of highway. They are kitsch, they are a little absurd, and they are also a strangely wonderful window into small-town Australian identity and history.

This guide rounds up the Big Things and other roadside oddities genuinely worth a detour, organised so you can build a few of them into whatever road trip you already have planned.

📋 TL;DR — the quick version

• 🍌 The Big Banana in Coffs Harbour is the original Big Thing, built in 1964, and still one of the most visited.
• 🐑 The Big Merino in Goulburn stands 15 metres tall and is one of the most photographed roadside stops in New South Wales.
• 🦞 The Big Lobster in Kingston SE is a South Australian icon and a favourite for genuinely bizarre road trip photos.
• 🍍 The Big Pineapple near Nambour has been restored into a proper visitor attraction, not just a photo stop.
• 🥜 The Big Peanut, Big Prawn and Big Koala round out a huge list of animal and produce-themed giants worth seeking out.
• 🚗 Most Big Things sit right on major highways, making them easy five to fifteen minute detours rather than dedicated day trips.
• 📸 Early morning or late afternoon gives the best light and the fewest other tourists in your photos.
• 🗺️ A few dedicated Big Things road trip maps exist online if you want to plan a route specifically around collecting them.

🍌 The Big Banana, Coffs Harbour

The Big Banana, built in 1964 on the New South Wales North Coast, is widely credited as the original Big Thing, the structure that kicked off the entire trend. It was built by a local banana grower looking for a way to draw passing traffic off the highway, and the gamble paid off spectacularly, spawning an entire genre of Australian roadside architecture in the decades that followed.

Unlike a lot of Big Things, which are little more than a static structure and a car park, the Big Banana has grown into a genuine family attraction, with a water park, toboggan ride, and exhibits on the local banana industry. It is worth budgeting a couple of hours here rather than just a quick photo stop if you are travelling with kids.

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🐑 The Big Merino, Goulburn

Standing 15 metres tall just off the Hume Highway, the Big Merino, affectionately nicknamed Rambo by locals, is one of the most recognisable Big Things in the country and an obvious stop for anyone driving between Sydney and Canberra or Melbourne. It was built in the 1980s to celebrate Goulburn’s history as a major wool-producing region, and you can climb an internal staircase up into the sheep’s head for a lookout over the surrounding paddocks.

A gift shop and cafe sit at the base, making this an easy fifteen-minute stretch-your-legs stop on an otherwise long and fairly featureless drive down the Hume.

🦞 The Big Lobster, Kingston SE

The Big Lobster, known locally as Larry, stands beside the Princes Highway in the small South Australian town of Kingston SE, on the route between Adelaide and Melbourne along the coast. Built in 1979, its bright red fibreglass shell towers 17 metres over the surrounding car park, celebrating the region’s genuinely significant rock lobster fishing industry.

Larry has had a rough few years, closing and reopening more than once as the attached restaurant changed hands, so it is worth checking current opening status before planning a meal around the stop. Even if the restaurant is closed on the day you pass through, the structure itself remains one of the most striking Big Things in the country and well worth the photo.

🍍 The Big Pineapple, Sunshine Coast

Near Nambour on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, the Big Pineapple has had one of the more interesting second acts of any Big Thing in the country. After years of decline, the site was redeveloped into a genuine visitor attraction, with markets, walking trails, a wildlife park and food stalls built around the original 1971 pineapple structure, which visitors can still climb inside for a lookout view over the surrounding plantation.

It is a good example of how a Big Thing can evolve past pure kitsch into something with genuine standalone appeal, and it is worth a couple of hours if you are exploring the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

🥜 More Big Things worth the detour

Beyond the headline names above, Australia’s Big Things list runs deep, and part of the fun is simply not knowing what you might spot on an unfamiliar stretch of highway.

1. The Big Prawn, Ballina, NSW. A giant pink crustacean towering over a shopping centre car park, celebrating the region’s prawn trawling industry, and one of the most photographed Big Things on the North Coast.
2. The Big Koala, Dadswells Bridge, VIC. A 14-metre koala on the Western Highway between Melbourne and Adelaide, complete with a small wildlife park and gift shop at its base.
3. The Big Golden Guitar, Tamworth, NSW. Built to celebrate Tamworth’s status as Australia’s country music capital, and an essential stop during the annual country music festival.
4. The Big Orange, Berri, SA. A striking giant orange in South Australia’s Riverland region, celebrating the area’s citrus industry, though it has had periods of closure over the years.
5. The Big Ned Kelly, Glenrowan, VIC. A towering armoured figure of Australia’s most famous bushranger, marking the town where Ned Kelly’s gang made its final stand.
6. The Big Cassowary, Mission Beach, QLD. Celebrating the endangered flightless bird that calls the surrounding Wet Tropics home, and a good excuse to learn more about cassowary conservation while you are in the area.

🧭 Planning a Big Things road trip

🗺️ Fit them into a route you are already driving

Very few travellers plan an entire trip purely around Big Things, and you do not need to. Most sit directly on major highways between the destinations Australians are already driving between anyway, so the more practical approach is simply checking what sits along your existing route and building in the five to fifteen minute detours as you go.

📸 Time your photos well

Most Big Things are large enough that midday sun creates harsh shadows across the structure, so early morning or late afternoon light generally makes for a considerably better photo. Weekday visits also tend to be quieter than weekends, particularly at the more famous stops like the Big Banana and Big Merino, which draw a genuine crowd during school holidays.

🕰️ Check opening status before a dedicated detour

A number of Big Things across the country have closed, moved, or fallen into disrepair over the decades, and a few have been lost entirely to fire, storm damage or simple demolition. If you are planning a longer detour specifically to see one, particularly one of the smaller or lesser-known examples, a quick search before you leave will save you the disappointment of arriving at an empty lot.

Whatever your route, keep an eye out. Australia’s Big Things are a genuinely unique piece of the country’s roadside culture, equal parts marketing gimmick and folk art, and there is a good chance one is waiting on a highway you are about to drive down without even realising it.

🏛️ Why Australia has so many of these

The Big Things phenomenon is not really an accident of taste, it is a direct product of Australian geography and economics. Country towns here are often separated by hundreds of kilometres of fairly featureless highway, and before the era of fuel-efficient cars and GPS route planning, that made passing tourist traffic a genuinely valuable, finite resource for small local economies. A giant fibreglass banana or sheep was a cheap, memorable way to make sure travellers pulled off the highway and spent money in town rather than driving straight past.

Most Big Things were built to celebrate whatever industry actually sustained the local area, bananas in Coffs Harbour, wool in Goulburn, lobsters in Kingston SE, which is part of why they still feel like more than empty kitsch today. They are, in a strange way, a genuine piece of regional economic history, preserved in fibreglass and concrete rather than a museum display case. That context is worth keeping in mind next time you pull over for a photo. You are not just looking at a big sheep, you are looking at a town’s attempt, decades ago, to put itself on the map.

🗺️ Building your own Big Things itinerary

If you want to turn this into more of a deliberate mission rather than an incidental series of detours, a few classic Australian road trip routes happen to string together an unusually high concentration of Big Things.

• 🛣️ The Pacific Highway, Sydney to Brisbane. Covers the Big Banana, the Big Prawn and several smaller examples along the North Coast, making it arguably the single best stretch of highway in the country for Big Things collecting.
• 🛣️ The Hume Highway, Sydney to Melbourne. Anchored by the Big Merino in Goulburn, with several smaller examples in regional towns along the route.
• 🛣️ The Princes Highway, Adelaide to Melbourne. Takes in the Big Lobster at Kingston SE and a handful of other coastal town oddities along South Australia’s Limestone Coast.
• 🛣️ The Western Highway, Melbourne to Adelaide. Home to the Big Koala at Dadswells Bridge, alongside a scattering of other regional Victorian examples.

If you are the type of traveller who likes a themed challenge, keeping a running tally of how many Big Things you have ticked off across a longer Australian road trip adds a genuinely fun secondary goal to an otherwise ordinary long drive, particularly if you are travelling with kids who need something to look forward to between destinations.

One last practical note: several Big Things now have their own small gift shops selling genuinely fun, low-cost souvenirs, tea towels, fridge magnets, postcards, that make far more memorable keepsakes than anything from an airport shop. If you have young kids in the car, letting them pick a small souvenir at each stop is also a genuinely effective way to keep a long highway drive feeling like an adventure rather than a chore, one giant banana or lobster at a time.

And if you happen to spot one that is not on this list, that is half the fun. New entries and revivals turn up more often than you would expect, so keep your eyes on the horizon.

Local tourism offices in smaller towns are often the best source of up-to-date information on Big Things in their area, since official state tourism sites do not always list the smaller or more obscure examples. A quick stop at a visitor information centre can turn up a genuinely surprising find just down the road that never would have shown up in an online search beforehand.

Safe travels, and happy hunting.

May your next road trip be full of unexpected giants.

Even seasoned Australian road trippers who have driven every major highway in the country will tell you there is always one more Big Thing they have not seen yet, tucked away down a side road or standing quietly outside a town too small to appear on most maps. That is really the appeal of the whole tradition. It rewards curiosity over planning, and a willingness to take the slightly longer, slightly stranger route home.