From the iconic Big Banana in Coffs Harbor to the towering Big Lobster in Kingston, the Australian landscape is dotted with more than 150 oversized attractions that have captured the country’s imagination for more than sixty years.
Born from grassroots community initiatives in the 1960s, these whimsical roadside giants have evolved from simple tourist magnets to major economic engines for regional Australia.
But could Australia’s big things, beyond their obvious role as Instagram-worthy pit stops and tourism hotspots, be impacting something much more substantial: the property markets of the cities they call home?
The phenomenon started in 1964 with the Big Banana of Coffs Harbour, established to celebrate the region’s banana growing industry.
What started as a clever marketing ploy quickly turned into a national trend, with communities across the country creating their own oversized tributes to local industries, products and wildlife.
RELATED: Shock amount Australia’s strangest big things are worth seeing
West Papuan singer-songwriter, activist and refugee Lea Firth – known as Voice of Lele – for the infamous Big Banana.
Today, these structures serve multiple economic functions that extend far beyond their initial tourist appeal, acting as powerful branding tools that help regional cities establish a distinctive identity in an increasingly competitive landscape.
However, a new analysis of real estate performance in Big Thing cities shows that the relationship between quirky attractions and property values is more complex than their tourism success suggests.
Coastal clusters: the advantage of location
The data shows a clear coastal advantage among Big Thing locations.
Woombye, home of the Big Pineapple on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, has a median house price of $988,500, a remarkable 31.5 per cent above the wider Queensland regional market.
The Big Pineapple officially relaunched in early 2024 after undergoing a major renovation project by owner Peter Kendall and his company CMC Property, who purchased the icon in 2011 for $5.8 million. It had previously been owned by the same family for thirty years.
MORE NEWS: Elton John’s secret Aus hideout for sale
![](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 768 1024"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The Big Pineapple in Woombye on the Sunshine Coast has had a makeover.
Aussies love their big fruits, including The Big Mango in Bowen.
The tourist landmark, which stood 16 meters high, first opened in 1971 in Nambour on the Sunshine Coast and included a tourist train, zoo and souvenir shop.
It made international headlines in 1983 when the late Diana, Princess of Wales and then Prince Charles took a train ride during their visit to Australia.
Similarly, West Ballina’s Big Prawn is in a market valued at $882,500, almost 10 per cent above regional averages in New South Wales.
Even the established Big Banana market in Coffs Harbor remains stable at a regional level with an average of $800,000.
This coastal clustering reveals a fundamental truth: natural amenities and accessibility appear to be more important than new attractions when it comes to sustainable property value growth. These coastal Big Thing cities benefit from lifestyle appeal, proximity to growth centers and an established tourism infrastructure that extends far beyond their vast monuments.
The contrast with the locations inland is great.
MORE NEWS: Jamie Durie’s $33 million Avalon eco-home features a potable pool
Mary Fowler and Nathan Cleary at the Big Mango in Bowen.
Bowen’s Big Mango, despite the town’s status as a major agricultural centre, is in a property market valued at just $480,000, 36 per cent below the Queensland regional average.
The iconic 10-metre-tall sculpture was erected in 2002 as part of a community campaign.
It made headlines in 2014 when it mysteriously disappeared overnight.
It was later revealed that restaurant chain Nando’s was responsible for the robbery as part of a stunt to promote a new mango and lime flavored sauce.
As a token of appreciation for the community’s support, Nando later gifted the Big Mango’s doppelgänger, the Mini Mango, to Bowen.
MORE NEWS: New Aus hotspots fuel property boom
The Big Cassowary in Mission Beach, Queensland, taken from the book Big Aussie Icons.
Map the Miner, on the edge of the road at Kapunda, pays tribute to the Cornish town’s mining history, and the big fella is also known as Map Kernow or the Son of Cornwall.
The Mini Mango is a 6 meter tall mango that was built to appear as the Big Mango in Melbourne, as the actual $90,000 Big Mango was too big to make the trip.
The Mini Mango is located on Bowen’s waterfront.
Meanwhile, Mission Beach’s Big Cassowary is also doing little to boost real estate prices.
The property market, despite its coastal location, is valued at $550,000, lagging regional markets by 27 percent.
These gaps suggest that geographic isolation and limited economic diversity cannot be overcome by tourist attractions alone.
Wine and heritage: exceptions to the rule
Intriguingly, some heritage-focused Big Things in wine and tourism regions are bucking the trend. Rutherglen’s Big Wine Bottle is showing exceptional annual growth of 15.7 percent and growth of 166 percent over the past decade, likely driven by the Murray Valley’s evolution into a premium wine tourism destination.
This success illustrates how Big Things can strengthen existing economic forces instead of creating them from scratch.
MORE NEWS: Wild: What Really Happened to Marlboro Man
![Life size penguin in Penguin resort, Tasmania, Australia](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 1280 720"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Life size penguin in the seaside town of Penguin, Tasmania.
One of the most beloved attractions in Adelaide Hills, SA is the world’s largest rocking horse in Gumeracha. Designed by David McIntosh and opened in 1981 after an eight-month construction period, the structure, which cost $100,000 to build, stands 60 feet (18.3 meters) tall.
Tasmania presents an interesting case study in which both Big Thing locations, Penguin and Latrobe, outperform their regional market.
The town of Big Penguin has an income of $615,000 (12 per cent more than regional Tasmania), while Latrobe’s Big Platypus is marginally above the regional average.
This suggests that the island nation’s wider property performance has improved all markets, regardless of roadside attractions.
The limits of novelty: big things in stagnant economies
The data also highlights the limitations of Big Things in economically stagnant areas. Goulburn’s Big Merino, a tribute to the traditional wool industry, is 21.8 per cent below the regional NSW average of $629,000.
Similarly, despite its proximity to Darwin, Humpty Doo’s Big Boxing Crocodile shows a minimum ten-year growth rate of just 8.3 percent, well below the area’s broader performance.
Western Australia’s Donnybrook Big Apple provides another cautionary tale, running 13.7 per cent below the WA regional average despite the state’s resource-driven property growth.
MORE NEWS: Aus ghost town listed for wild price of $100,000
The Big Lobster, affectionately known as ‘Larry’, was born in 1979 after being designed and built by the creator of The Paul Kelly. The 17-meter-tall statue was originally conceived by Ian Backler, a local lobster fisherman, who, while traveling in the United States, formulated a plan to build a visitor center in Kingston.
The McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery in Langwarrin is home to more than 100 sculptures, some of which are quite large. A famous resident is a 10-meter-high stainless steel gnome by sculptor Gregor Kregar, officially called Reflective Lullaby and called Frankie by locals.
This underperformance suggests that even in strong regional markets, isolated locations are struggling to benefit from broader economic momentum.
The evidence suggests that Big Things work best as tourism enhancers in areas with strong fundamental benefits, an attractive coastal lifestyle, potential for wine tourism or proximity to growth corridors.
They appear unable to single-handedly transform real estate markets in isolated or economically declining areas.
MORE NEWS: My Dog’s Midnight Gift: A Possum Pocalypse in My Bed
A famous historical figure immortalized in mega-size is bushranger Ned Kelly with statues in Maryborough, Queensland, and on a mini golf course near Ballarat. But perhaps its most famous incarnation is a 1.5-ton, 6-meter-high statue in the Victorian town of Glenrowan, where Kelly lived as a youngster before his infamous final siege at a local inn in 1880.
Located in the Hunter Region is home to the Mortels Sheepskin factory and with it The Big UGG Boots, which are 13 times the size of a women’s UGG boot, size 8. Established in April 2015, the boots are known for withstanding some of the most catastrophic weather events in the Hunter Regions, including a storm that was the equivalent of a Category 2 cyclone the day after this had been established.
As Australia’s regional property markets continue their current growth trajectory, these findings indicate that while Big Things remain important cultural icons and tourism drivers, their influence on property values is highly dependent on location, accessibility and broader economic fundamentals.
In the complex world of real estate markets, it seems that substance ultimately trumps size, even when that size reaches truly monumental proportions.
You can read more about Australia’s great things here.
– By Vanessa Rader, Ray White Chief Investigative Officer and Lydia Kellner, News Corp
#Big #Increase #Real #Estate #Values #data #reveals #surprising #truth #realestate.com.au