Big Things in Australia

This past study break, eleven friends and I took a bit of an epic coming-of-age road trip along the southern coast of Western Australia. Our rapscallious band was composed of nine naive Americans, two incomprehensible Norwegians, and one intrepid Australian. Challenging the perilous Australian freeways with our indomitable rental cars, we paid friendly visits to the smallish towns/villages of Dunsborough, Margaret River, and Albany. In alphabetical order, our activities included: beaching, bodyboarding, brewery-ing, casual drinking, caving, fishing (failure), modeling, photography, raving, tree climbing, winery-ing, and zleeping. Altogether, the achieved amount of fun rivaled a week at Disney with your two favorite celebrities: Antonio Banderas and Cher. I got a good taste of the backpacker/hostel lifestyle, which will come in handy when I graduate, make a religious pilgrimage to Potterworld, then backpack across Europe for several months.

The journey was rather uneventful in terms of revelations into Australian culture, UNTIL halfway through the ride home when we made an important discovery. We saw a sign for "The Giant Ram," and followed our hearts all the way to the center of a small town. In a surprising and completely unexpected turn of events, what should we see but... a giant ram!When you're a small Australian town in the middle of the outback, you obviously want to get put on the map so you get some traffic. So you think to yourself: "What are the ways I can do this? Wage war on another small Australian town? Build a nice tourist center and run a small ad campaign? Create a town blog? WAIT! Let's make big things!" From this dialogue, about 150 large objects have been created and bragged about in small towns all over Australia. There's a full list here. Among my favorites are the giant avocado, beer can, guitar, mango, scotsman, and rolling pin. Us lucky blokes got to witness the giant ram, in the town of Wagin. It was a life changing experience, I can tell you that much.

In closing, I invite you to witness the pinnacle of my modeling career, in a piece I like to call "The Dutchman Sights a Ship on the Horizon That is Likely Also Dutch." Cheers.


No worries,
Kevin