A Poo Museum In Tasmania Is Fighting To Keep Up A Sign Of A Penguin Taking A Dump
1,600 people have signed an online petition to save a pooping penguin sign out the front of a Pooseum in Tasmania.
There’s a shit show going down in Tasmania. The owner of a museum and members of a local council are fighting over an image on the museum’s sign, of a penguin pooping.
Karin Koch, the owner of Tasmania’s Pooseum, has made a formal complaint to the state’s public sector misconduct watchdog. She claimed that she’s been subjected to years of “bullying and discriminating behaviour” by members of the Clarence City Council, who want her Pooseum sign taken down.
Tasmania’s Pooseum, with its controversial penguin image.
What The Heck Is A Pooseum?
Tasmania’s Pooseum is a small but much-loved science museum “dedicated to all things poo”. The Richmond museum is the only one of its kind in Australia.
Creator and owner, Karin Koch, created the museum to break down what she calls the “shyness in society” around discussing poo, and to encourage her message that “talking about poo is not a taboo”.
The museum has a large amount of animal droppings on display.
What’s All The Fighting About?
According to Koch, the local council has had a long-held grudge against the pooping penguin sign out the front of the museum since it was put up in 2019, because it doesn’t meet the town’s “heritage requirements”.
The council also supposedly think that the sign is “too large and too modern”, according to Koch.
There is also a bronze statue of a dog sh*tting- across from the sign, with a placard that says “Pooby-Doo”, which Koch claims no member of council has ever muttered a word about.
The controversy over Koch’s penguin sign has now caused so much tension that it’s made its way right up to Tasmania’s integrity commission.
The council has accused Koch of putting up the sign without a planning permit, and have been demanding the sign be remade or removed ever since.
In a letter to the Tasmanian integrity commission, Koch wrote that the council had “engaged in ongoing bullying and discriminating behaviour to enforce the removal of the sign”.
But according to a letter from the council, “the sign has caused the town of Richmond to lose its historic cultural heritage significance and does not contribute positively to the town’s streetscape.”
The local mayor, Doug Chipman, has even stepped in to defend the council. He told The Guardian that the sign issue has “absolutely nothing to do” with the pooing penguin image, and is much more about the size and placement of the sign.
Museum-owner Koch has launched an online petition to save the sign, which has now gotten more than 1,600 signatures. She is determined to keep fighting for her, now iconic, poo sign.