State-Funded Yabby Statue Puts Windorah on Display

A $13,000 state-funded project has put a 4.6-metre yabby statue on Albert Street in Windorah. Local officials hope it will persuade tourists to stay longer. The town has a population of 100, and the project aims to draw visitors and support economic development in communities out west.

Artist Jobella Bennett said it matters when councils and communities back artists: “There's so many amazing artists out there and it's really nice that councils or the communities or whoever's organised it is actually backing artists.” The town unveiled the statue at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. It connects a local symbol with a commissioned artwork and the tourism goal set out by the shire mayor.

Who Sets the Project in Motion

Barcoo Shire Mayor Sally O'Neil said Windorah is best known for its “international yabby races,” a fixture on the town’s annual social calendar. She said the statue could persuade tourists to stop and spend more time in the area. “Hopefully it'll pull the tourists up and they may hang around an extra day ... it's good for economic development of the communities out west,” she said.

The project draws on state money, and the council commissioned the work. Bennett said the council “got rung up” and asked her, “‘Could you make a yabby?’” She replied, “‘Yeah, how big?’” The answer: “‘As big as you can make it.’” The article doesn’t break down the funding or explain how officials selected the project. It does identify who supplied the money, who made the request and what the project is meant to do: attract visitors.

A Local Artist, a Public Commission

Bennett, a Toowoomba artist who had begun hosting classes in the central west, spent three months making the sculpture from bird wire and sheet metal. It’s the largest artwork she has made. “It's my first big project, I learned a lot,” she said. Before she began, she researched yabbies, and she said she hoped to make more “big things.”

The project brings a local emblem into public view and turns it into a tourist attraction. O'Neil pointed to Cooper Creek as a place where visitors can fish and catch yabbies: “you will pull up, go fishing, and you're bound to get a yabby or two, or five or more.” The mayor’s pitch is direct: stop, visit, and perhaps stay an extra day. The article doesn’t establish whether that will bring the hoped-for benefit to Windorah.

The Town as a Collective Project

Windorah’s yabby joins a line of Australian roadside attractions: Ballina’s big prawn, Cardwell’s big crab, Bowen’s big mango, Tully’s big gumboot and Woombye’s big pineapple. University of the Sunshine Coast history lecturer Amy Clarke said such statues are common in Canada and the United States, too, while Australia continues to build more. “Australia is still pedal to the floor, kind of, 'Let's build as many of them as we can,'” she said.

Clarke said Australian big statues often involve community participation, as chambers of commerce, local councils or charities come together to celebrate a town and attract visitors. She called the process “really a kind of group project.” The trend began in the 1960s, she said, and has grown more official over time, with companies and professional fibreglass artists specializing in giant objects. In Windorah, Bennett received the commission, and the council’s request became a three-month public artwork. The mayor’s concrete ambition remains: bring tourists in and give them a reason to stay.