The Bigger They Come

Sure, Egypt has the Great Sphinx of Giza and the Pyramid of Cheops, but Australia has giant prawns.

- By Tim The Yowie Man. Photography Trent Mitchell

After facing demolition in 2010, Ballina's 33t colossal crustacean was relocated from the facade of a service station to a hardware store, where it now looms large over surrounding suburban street.

I CURSE, SLAMMING my car door as I step out into the frigid Snowy Mountains air. “What? It’s gone!” I’ve just driven two hours on teeth-rattling back roads from Canberra to photograph Adaminaby’s Big Trout. Weighing in at 2.5 tonnes and measuring 10m in height, it’s not only one of Australia’s better-known “Big Things” (BTs), it also holds the lofty title of the world’s biggest trout.

However, where the colourful rainbow trout – which has welcomed shivering visitors to the village’s main street for the past four decades – should be, there is instead a metal tower, draped in blue plastic, which is billowing in the stiff southerly. It’s also ringed by metal fencing. But for a lack of police tape, you could be excused for thinking it was a crime scene.

Brothers Attila and Louis Mokany where the masterminds behind Goulburn's Big Merino –built in 1985 to encourage motorists to stop at their service station.

Has Adaminaby’s pride and joy been trout-napped? Surely not.

Where would you hide a fish that big? Maybe she just got sick of camera-toting tourists jumping on her tail and she wriggled her way to one of the nearby streams laden with her (much smaller) name sakes?