The name got here at dinner-time on a Monday night time. Because it occurred, crispy roast potatoes had been a part of my dinner – as they ceaselessly are. The extreme consumption of potatoes in my life is a part of my heritage.
“Nicely, you’re not the Huge Potato Heiress,” my mom mentioned down the road. “The sale settled at the moment.”
For practically a decade, I’ve identified what it feels prefer to be in a household that owns one in all Australia’s iconic Huge Issues, after my dad and mom purchased it from its creator and builder, Jim Mauger, in 2014. I say “iconic”, however on the subject of nationwide recognition of Australia’s large issues on breakfast TV exhibits or YouTube compilations, the Huge Potato is all too usually omitted in favour of its extra flashy cousins such because the Huge Prawn or Huge Banana.
The Huge Potato sits in an in any other case vacant lot within the NSW city of Robertson, subsequent to my dad and mom’ grocery retailer, which they constructed and have run for 34 years. My childhood was spent within the shadow of the Huge Potato.
My first thought after getting the information?
Thank Godfordshire I received’t have to speak to any extra industrial radio hosts and faux their jokes evaluating the BP to a poo are humorous. I’d even felt obliged to provide you with a couple of of my very own through the years: “Yeah, Davo, it jogs my memory of a quantity 4 on the Bristol Well being Chart – wholesome, strong! You’d be comfortable to see such a factor drop out of your physique.”
Cue the Household Feud wrong-answer music.
After I introduced the sale on Twitter, my modest group of social media comrades responded in the best way I really like finest: potato puns.
This information has mashed me up. I’m wedged between pleasure and unhappiness. Is there no approach we might hash this out? Maybe if all of us chip in?
— Rachael (@RachaelHasIdeas) September 12, 2022
But one one that by no means sees the joke within the Huge Potato is my father, Neil Tait. He loves the Huge Potato. Actually loves it. Promoting it was a step in the direction of reluctant retirement, and he’s not fairly able to say goodbye.
“I’m devastated,” he tells me. “Each time I put the store indicators out on that land, I practically begin crying. I’m so happy with it.
“Folks assume it’s a joke, but it surely’s not. It’s so good for enterprise on this city. It’s actually underestimated.”
It’s been an enormous couple of years for La Grosse Pomme de Terre. It’s had all kinds of consideration. Earlier this yr it received Australia’s shittest large factor. Then there was an look on Channel Ten’s The lounge (nationwide tv!).
But essentially the most thrilling factor is that Hollywood got here to city for the primary time since George Miller introduced Babe to Robertson within the mid-Nineties.
Nicole Kidman and Judy Davis dropped by to movie a scene of their Apple TV present ROAR proper in entrance of the Huge Potato. The dialogue of their scene summed up what’s so particular about it:
“It’s so silly,” says Davis’s character, Rosie.
“Nicely, it makes you smile, nothing silly about that,” says Kidman’s character, Robin.
Maria Sava is the proprietor of the native bookstore, Ebook Nook 2577, which is throughout the street from the Huge Potato.
“The Huge Potato is a superb supply of enjoyable and delight as each weekend individuals arrive and take images with their households and pals,” she says. “It is usually an emblem of our nice farming heritage.
“Being throughout the street, the Ebook Nook enjoys the regular enterprise derived from these guests and their real curiosity within the landmark.”
What does the long run maintain for the city’s pretty massive tuber?
The land is zoned for growth and Robertson – solely two hours from Sydney and down the mountain to Wollongong – has been a very engaging spot for tree-changers since Covid.
“I hope it’s not demolished,” my dad says. “If the brand new proprietor needs to make use of the land for one thing else, I hope they’ll transfer the Huge Potato to the close by Pinkwood Park, throughout the street and about 100 metres away.”
My dream is that the brand new homeowners (and heiress, if there’s one) realise how particular this development of cement and soil is. Generations have grown up with it as a landmark and an indication of stability in a spot that’s eternally altering. It’s been a relentless in our city for greater than 45 years.
Might it final no less than one other 45.
