Ballina, NSW Australia

 

“The Best Catch in Ballina is the Big Prawn”

Remember when I was in Coffs Harbour and mentioned Australia’s passion for big things? Now, I’m in Ballina, facing the Big Prawn directly across the street from Bunnings Warehouse, one of Australia’s largest hardware stores. If you visit on a Sunday, many Bunnings stores host a sausage sizzle, with funds raised going back into the community—a tasty way to fundraise while accumulating steps as you wander around the huge warehouse.

Bunnings went a step further in helping the community when it purchased the site where the Big Prawn stood. This concrete and fiberglass landmark was built in 1989 without a tail atop a service station by Hungarian brothers who constructed service stations around the NSW region, figuring that adding big things as features would draw visitors' attention. They also constructed the Big Merino in Goulburn and the Big Oyster in Taree.

The brothers hired art student James Martin to design the Big Prawn. Martin studied prawns in detail and scaled his final plan to 30,000 times larger than a real prawn. When it first opened, the prawn had an internal staircase allowing visitors to climb inside its head and view the surroundings through its perspex eyes.

While Australia has a thing for big things, the Big Prawn was also built to commemorate the local prawn industry, as Ballina is where the method of netting prawns was pioneered. When the service station closed in 2010, the local council agreed to demolish the prawn. However, locals opposed the demolition vehemently, and this is where Bunnings stepped in, buying the site. They removed the prawn, refurbished it, added a tail, and propped it up on a steel frame, ensuring it continued to be listed as one of Australia's Big Things.

Ballina is located on the north bank of Richmond River and serves as the gateway to Byron Bay, where my journey will end. The traditional owners are the Bundjalung people, who have occupied the area for over 6000 years. European settlers arrived in 1828 aboard the HMS Rainbow when Captain Henry Rous explored Richmond River as far as Broadwater, about 15mi (25km) southwest of Ballina. The next round of settlers were cedar-cutting parties who travelled up from Clarence River, arriving onboard the Sally. They would soon be joined by other parties trekking overland.

In 1928, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, an Australian aviation pioneer, crossed the Ballina coast when he piloted the first transpacific flight. In 1973, the Las Balsas Expedition, consisting of three rafts made from balsa trees, left Ecuador to sail 8,600mi (13,850km) across the Pacific Ocean to Australia. Blown off course from their original destination in Queensland, the rafts reached Ballina. Two were towed into port, while the third was too waterlogged and cut loose. After 178 days at sea, the 12-man crew stepped safely onto terra firma. One of the rafts is displayed in Ballina’s Maritime Museum.