Who Shapes Australia's Big Things—and for Whom?

Mildura unveiled a giant smiling sultana this week, adding another oversized landmark to a regional-town tradition whose meaning is clearer than its funding or decision-making. The installation has cartoon eyes and a mouth. The ABC Radio National report calls such landmarks emblems of regional country towns and road-trip stops, but doesn't identify who paid for Mildura's sultana or how the decision to build it was made.

A landmark, with the paperwork left out

Windorah unveiled a 4.6-metre yabby just days before Mildura's sultana appeared. A couple of weeks earlier, Moora opened a pair of endangered Carnaby's cockatoos standing 11.5 metres tall. The report groups the yabby with what it calls the “giant crustacean crew,” while the cockatoos bring endangered birds into the same oversized public spectacle.

These are concrete facts about what towns have put on display. The account doesn't say whether residents chose the designs, who commissioned or funded them, or whether local people disagreed about the projects. No council vote, corporate sponsor or state directive appears in the report. That absence matters: the landmarks are described as part of cultural identity, but the machinery behind their creation remains outside the account.

Who gets to define the town

The program asks why Australians are drawn to Big Things. Its guests were Amy Clarke, senior lecturer in history at the University of the Sunshine Coast, who specialises in built heritage and material cultures, and Jobella Bennett, the wire sculpture artist behind Windorah's big yabby. The report names an artist and an academic, but it doesn't describe any community process, collective decision or mutual-aid effort behind the installations.

That doesn't make the objects meaningless. The report says oversized landmarks serve as road-trip stops and emblems of regional country towns. It places the sultana, yabby and cockatoos within a shared cultural practice: towns marking place through conspicuously large forms. But the story doesn't say who controls those symbols once they become landmarks, or whether the people who live nearby had a say in their creation.

There are no election promises, legislative fixes or institutional helpers described here. Nor does the account report state repression, corporate capture or a conflict between residents and authorities. It offers no basis for turning a sultana or a giant crustacean into evidence of a political struggle that the source doesn't document. The sharper question is narrower: whose choices become the town's public image, and whose choices go unreported?

The story behind the story

ABC Radio National brought the feature to listeners through Life Matters. “Australia's love of big things will never die” ran for 15 minutes 14 seconds, as part of a 55-minute, 5-second program titled “Redesigning the workplace for over-60s and our obsession with big things.” The other listed programs were “Redesigning work for your 60s and beyond,” lasting 23 minutes 42 seconds, and “Work In Progress: How are you being measured at work?”, lasting 12 minutes 48 seconds. Lucy Sweeney was the producer.

So the report gives listeners landmarks, measurements, names and a cultural question. It doesn't give them the funding trail or the public process. The giant sultana can grin; the people behind the decisions remain less visible.