The People Have Voted On Their Favourite Australian ‘Big Thing’ And Sorry To All Big Banana Fans

Australia has a lot of big with a capital ‘B’ tourist attractions — 150 to be precise. They make road trips worth going on, elevate photo opportunities, and make amusing anecdotes. But now the internet has spoken, with a massive lobster named Larry taking the crown for 2021 for the best-oversized novelty structure in all the land.

ABC presenter Warwick Long took matters into his own hands when he made a shortlist of contenders at the end of November, including the Big Golden Guitar (Tamworth, NSW), the Big Potato (Robertson, NSW), the Big Mower (Beerwah, QLD), and the Big Gumboot with a frog climbing it (Tully, QLD). An impressive 64 Big hopefuls had their fate left in the hands of Twitter in a multi-round bracket contest, using people’s choice polls to pedal their favourites through to the next round and towards victory.

It came down to a tight race between the Big “Rambo” Merino in Goulburn, NSW and Larry the Lobster in Kingston, South Australia — not to be confused with the Spongebob character with the same name. It was a tough call, with Big Merino fans really pulling strings out of their hats to keep him in the running.

“Seeing a lot of nonsense on my feed about some random crusty ass crustacean being better than the MVP big wooly boi,” fellow ABC journo Bridget Murphy tweeted during crunch time. “A lot of people hate lobster but everyone likes sheep.” But in the end, it wasn’t enough, and Larry was declared winner.

Ah but the big merino is just so big!

— Calla Wahlquist (@callapilla) December 6, 2021

“Ah well, Larry’s pretty good too y’know,” said the runner-up’s creator Silvio Apponyi in a radio interview after hearing Larry was in the lead.

All you need to know about the red crustacean apart from his name, is that he’s 40 years old, nearly 20 metres tall, and was almost ripped down five years ago until Hamish and Andy started the #PinchAMate campaign to save him. It could’ve been a completely different story this year if they hadn’t.

But the lobster had one more resurrection left in him, according to Long. “Larry was the comeback king — coming from behind against the pineapple and then the merino to ultimately take the title,” he declared in the victory post on Tuesday. “Congratulations, Larry!”

C’ARN LARRY!! pic.twitter.com/VnhgU3gxFk

— Cressida Dunnart (@CDunnart) December 1, 2021

A few notables didn’t make the cut this year such as the World’s Tallest Bin in Western Australia and a five metre tall Poo in Kiama — the deserved winner of Junkee’s own list of most underwhelming big things in Australia last year. Some legend pinpointed all the Big boys on Google Maps if you want to track down your closest structure.