Big Prawn – Ballina

My boyfriend shouted “I see it” and before I had time to clarify, my jaw was dropped and my eyes a little misty. Coming in as one of our most acclaimed Big Things, I honestly had low expectations about the prawn – I’d seen a lot of seafood related big things and they’d always fallen short of the wow factor. Well not Mr Prawn, he exceeded every expectation. 

As someone who loves Big Things I’ve never encountered a big thing before on such a scale and with such amazing construction and detail and to think in just 2009 Ballina council had approved it’s demolition. Perhaps I wouldn’t of been singing the prawn’s praises quite as much if Bunnings (of all places) hadn’t of took over the project when they bought the land.  It wasn't a little project either coming it at $400,000, which saw the prawn moved 100m onto new stilts, given a tail (finally) and an amazing fresh coat of paint. I really can only sing Bunnings praises – looking back at photos of the old prawn – have a peak here and some bad graff here, it’s really one dramatic improvement - though I do wonder about those mysterious windows! The only way I can fault the prawn is that you can’t touch him or go inside and the background is either the Bunnings building or an empty lot :( I'll take a little commercial Bunnings action though, a nod to them for not letting this amazing icon be destroyed :)

And hey, being on stilts is at least a step up (ha ha) from being on top of a building with only a top half to show!

DETAILS
Size: 9m x 9m (including stilts) 
Year: 1989 
Address: Bunnings 507 River St, Ballina NSW 2478 Australia (you’ll need to exit the pacific mwy to reach ballina) 
Photo Taken: Jan 2014 

SCORE
Size ***** 
Accessibility * 
Aesthetics ***** 
Unusual ** 
Location*** 
16/25 stars 

This is the only time my scoring system has let me down, I think the prawn’s sheer size – check out the photo (I’m the little peg at the bottom) and aesthetics alone almost make the prawn deserving of a close to perfect score – also I usually give seafood related big things 0/5 on the unusual but he is just so darn cool I bent my own rules! Also did I mention I love prawns!!