The History Behind the Big Banana: How Australia's Big Things Movement Started

If you've ever driven up the Pacific Highway and spotted that unmistakable flash of yellow looming above the road at Coffs Harbour, you know the feeling. A grin spreads across your face, someone in the car shouts "Big Banana!", and suddenly everybody needs a photo. It's a rite of passage for Australian road trippers — and it has been since 1964.

But the Big Banana isn't just a novelty photo stop. It's the landmark that launched one of Australia's most beloved cultural traditions: the Big Things. Today there are over 1,000 oversized sculptures scattered across the country, from the Big Merino in Goulburn to Larry the Lobster in Kingston. And it all traces back to one man, a banana plantation, and a very big idea.

An American Entomologist with a Very Aussie Dream

The story of the Big Banana begins not in Australia, but in the United States. In 1962, American entomologist John Landi arrived in the Coffs Harbour region on a six-month research trip to study insects that attack commercial banana plantations. He fell so in love with the area that he and his wife Betty decided to emigrate, purchasing a five-hectare banana plantation at Macauley's Headland, just north of Coffs Harbour.

Landi set up a roadside banana stall to sell his fruit to passing traffic on the Pacific Highway. But he had a problem that every roadside stallholder knows: how do you get cars travelling at speed to actually stop?

He remembered something from back home — a giant pineapple sitting atop the Dole Cannery in Hawaii. If a big pineapple could stop traffic there, surely a big banana could do the same on the Pacific Highway.

Building the Biggest Banana in the World

Landi pitched his idea to the local chapter of the Banana Growers' Federation, and president Ray Kratz agreed it was worth backing. The Federation put up half the construction budget — a total of 1,200 pounds.

Local engineer Alan Chapman took on the design challenge. His method was charmingly hands-on: he found the best-looking banana he could, sliced it into 40 cross-sections (each about a quarter-inch wide), laid each section onto squared paper, and enlarged them six times to create construction plans.

Builder Alan Harvey started work in September 1964, with a brief to have the banana ready before Christmas. The structure was designed like an upside-down fishing boat so visitors could walk through it. Interestingly, Landi asked that it be built as a temporary structure — just in case he wanted to develop the land into something else later.

On 22 December 1964, the Big Banana opened to the public. At 13 metres long, 5 metres high, and 2.4 metres wide, it was the biggest banana in the world. The bright yellow, timber-framed ferroconcrete sculpture was unlike anything Australians had ever seen at the roadside.

Instant Success

The impact was immediate. During the Christmas school holiday period, over 2,000 people visited every single day — a staggering number considering the population of Coffs Harbour was only around 6,000 at the time. Word spread fast, and the Big Banana quickly became the must-stop attraction on any East Coast road trip.

John Landi had dreams of turning the site into a Disney-style theme park, but it wasn't to be during his time. In 1968, he sold his share to his partner John Enevoldson, who continued growing the business. The plantation expanded to 20 additional acres, a shop and café were added, and the car park kept getting bigger.

By the 1970s, the Big Banana complex included gift shops, an art shop, a fruit shop, a plant nursery, and a restaurant run by a chef named Pancho (nationality unknown) whose specialty, oddly enough, was schnitzels.

But Was the Big Banana Really First?

Here's where the story gets interesting — and slightly contentious.

The Big Banana is widely claimed as Australia's first Big Thing, but the truth is a little more complicated. There are at least two other contenders for the title.

The Big Scotsman (1963, Adelaide): A five-metre-tall fibreglass bagpipe player was erected outside Scotty's Motel in Medindie, Adelaide, in 1963 — a full year before the Big Banana. Designed by Paul Kelly (not the singer), who later went on to build the Big Lobster in Kingston, the Big Scotsman is arguably the true original. The project was initiated in October 1962 and unveiled in 1963.

Ploddy the Dinosaur (1963, Gosford): Also in 1963, Eric Worrell, founder of the Australian Reptile Park in Wyoming (near Gosford, NSW), commissioned a 26-metre concrete replica of a Diplodocus dinosaur to draw visitors from the Pacific Highway. Ploddy took just two months to build, weighed almost 100 tonnes, and became an instant icon on the Central Coast.

So who was actually first? It depends on how you define "Big Thing." The Big Scotsman and Ploddy were both completed in 1963, making them older than the Big Banana. But neither spawned a movement the way the Big Banana did. It was the Big Banana that captured the Australian imagination and directly inspired a wave of oversized produce sculptures — the Big Pineapple on the Sunshine Coast (1971), the Big Orange in various locations, and eventually hundreds more.

Whatever the verdict on who was technically first, there's no argument about who was most influential.

The Big Banana Grows Up

The Big Banana's story didn't stop with the original sculpture. In 1988, local entrepreneur Bob Johnson purchased the site and embarked on a $30 million redevelopment, transforming it into an educational showcase with attractions brought in from Brisbane's Expo '88. At one point, there was even a train ride featuring a terrifying animatronic bunyip.

In 1995, the banana was physically moved — shifted a few metres forward and raised about a metre to improve visibility from the Pacific Highway. This led to a persistent myth that the banana had shrunk. (It hadn't. The surrounding development simply made it appear smaller than people remembered from childhood.)

That same year, 200 globetrotting young Australians voted the Big Banana the most bizarre and grotesque tourist attraction in the world, edging out the Big Pineapple at Nambour and — remarkably — the Giant Penis seat in Amsterdam's Sex Museum. A dubious honour, but an honour nonetheless.

Today, the Big Banana Fun Park is a full-scale family destination featuring a water park, laser tag arena, ice-skating rink, toboggan ride, mini golf, a giant slide, and the "World of Bananas" plantation tour experience. In 2014, it received close to 150,000 visitors during peak tourist season alone, and some estimates put annual visitors at over a million.

In a 2015 survey conducted for the TV game show Family Feud, participants were asked to name an "Australian Landmark." The Big Banana was the number one answer — ahead of the Sydney Opera House and Uluru.

The Movement It Started

The Big Banana didn't just put Coffs Harbour on the map. It put the idea of "build something big and they will come" into the minds of entrepreneurs, tourism boards, and community groups across Australia.

The formula was simple: take something your town is known for, build a giant version of it, and watch the tourists pull over. Banana growing? Big Banana. Pineapple farming? Big Pineapple. Merino wool? Big Merino. Prawns? Big Prawn. The concept was infinitely adaptable and perfectly suited to Australia's car-centric, road-trip culture.

By 2022, Australia had over 1,000 'Big Things' (though not all are equally 'big'). Every state and territory has them. They range from the iconic (the Big Pineapple, the Golden Guitar in Tamworth) to the wonderfully obscure (the Big Bogan in Nyngan, the Big Coffee Pot in Deloraine — which is actually a grain silo with a spout and handle attached).

Historian Dr Amy Clarke of the University of the Sunshine Coast has described the 1980s as the "peak era" for Big Things popularity. She traces the concept back to similar roadside attractions that appeared in the United States in the 1920s, driven by the rise of the motorcar. Australia, another nation built for road trips, was a natural fit.

Collecting Them All

For decades, ticking off Big Things was an informal game — a photo here, a mental note there. Families would argue about which ones they'd actually visited versus which ones they'd only driven past. ("We definitely stopped at the Big Prawn." "No, we didn't, Dad just slowed down.")

That's exactly why the Aussie Big Things Passport app exists. It turns the lifelong, loosely organised pursuit of Big Things into something you can properly track, share, and compete over. Mark off each one as you visit, see how your collection compares to other users, and discover Big Things you never knew existed.

Whether you start at the very beginning — with the Big Banana, Ploddy, or the Big Scotsman (we're not taking sides) — or pick up wherever your next road trip takes you, the app makes sure no Big Thing goes unrecorded.

Plan Your Big Banana Visit

Where: Pacific Highway, Coffs Harbour, NSW

What to do: Free to see the banana itself. Paid attractions at Big Banana Fun Park include the water park, laser tag, mini golf, ice-skating, toboggan rides, and the World of Bananas plantation tour.

Pro tip: Arrive early in peak season to beat the crowds. And yes, the chocolate-coated frozen banana from the café is as good as everyone says.