Big Pineapple

About

The Big Pineapple is a heritage-listed tourist attraction and big thing at Nambour Connection Road, Woombye, Sunshine Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Peddle Thorp and Harvey, Paul Luff, and Gary Smallcombe and Associates. It is also known as Sunshine Plantation. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 6 March 2009. The 2-level Big Pineapple is 16 metres (52 ft) high and was originally opened on 15 August 1971. It is situated on a 165-hectare (410-acre) site. Under new ownership the owners are facilitating new attractions such as the Big Pineapple Music Festival and the Big Pineapple was also selected to host Midnight Oil within their reunion concert series in 2017. The owners are also embarking on a master planning process through community consultation to further rejuvenate the Big Pineapple experience, with a range of new attractions and services proposed.

The former Sunshine Plantation tourist attraction, now known as The Big Pineapple, is located on the north side of the Nambour Connection Road (former Bruce Highway ), just to the west of the current Bruce Highway. It holds a fond place in the memories of many domestic and overseas tourists who drove or were driven north of Brisbane on holiday road trips after 1971. Apart from the iconic value of the Big Pineapple structure itself, as a roadside attraction of the Big Thing variety, the entire 40 hectares (99 acres) complex, with its retail and restaurant spaces, train ride and Nutmobile, crops, rainforest, Macadamia Nut Factory, Big Macadamia, Tomorrow's Harvest greenhouse, Farm Show, Wildlife Gardens, and Animal Nursery, represents an early attempt at agri-tourism in Queensland.

Big Things are large advertising objects, usually in the form of the item they are advertising, and are loosely defined as being at least twice the size of the object they represent and at least twice human size. Big Things have been called outdoor cultural objects which serve to construct and assert the identity of a town or area, and they have also been described as one of Australia's most distinctive home-grown forms of folk art. (The term "outdoor cultural object" was coined in the 2004 publication "Monumental Queensland: Signposts on a Cultural Landscape" by Lisanne Gibson and Joanna Besley.) The Big Pineapple appears to be the most widely recognised Big Thing in Queensland.

The first pineapple plants in Queensland were landed at the new Redcliffe settlement by the brig Amity in 1824, and in 1829, the Colonial Botanist Charles Fraser listed 34 pineapple plants amongst the crops flourishing in the 15-acre government garden at Brisbane that he had laid out in 1828. In the 1870s and 1880s, experiments in pineapple growing occurred in what would become the Maroochy Shire, but the first commercial pineapple crop in the area was at Thomas Davey's Woombye farm in 1895.

The area between the Mooloolah and Maroochy Rivers was closed to settlement prior to 1860 as part of a Reserve proclaimed by Governor George Gipps in 1842. Gipp's proclamation was rescinded by the Crown Lands Alienation Act 1860, which allowed for post-survey selection, and timber-getting licenses. In the early 1860s Edmund Lander leased the Mooloolah Back Plains run around the future site of Nambour, and timber getters started to exploit the area, working inland along waterways. The Alienation of Crown Lands Act 1868 also stimulated settlement, and by 1871 the census recorded 104 people living and working in the Maroochy region, although only 31 were permanent settlers. At this time, there were about 180 acres (73 ha) under pineapples in Queensland, mostly near Brisbane.

Maroochy developed as a region of small farms, and by the mid-1880s the region had 116 people employed in mixed farming, 70 in sugar, 52 in timber, and only 15 in grazing. The Maroochy Divisional Board was created in 1890 (becoming the Maroochy Shire in 1902), and would develop into Queensland's largest fruit growing area between the 1880s and 1915, thanks to its climate and rainfall, with bananas being grown from the 1880s, and pineapples from the 1890s. It was possible for small farmers to make a living out of pineapples as thousands of plants could be cultivated in each acre. Other crops grown in the Maroochy Shire included coffee, ginger, strawberries and citrus. Dairy farming also played an important part in the local economy from the 1890s.

The fruit industry in the Maroochy Shire was stimulated when the North Coast Railway was constructed northwards from Brisbane after 1886. The railway reached Woombye in 1890, and met the line from Gympie at Cooroy in July 1891. By 1900, the Blackall Range was a successful fruit growing area, and in 1901, Woombye was promoted as the fruit growing area in Queensland with the greatest potential. Around this time pineapples were overtaking citrus as the crop of choice in the area, especially at Woombye, with its well-drained soil and rolling hills. In 1914, the Brisbane district still produced most of Queensland's pineapples, while rising pineapple districts included the North Coast Line ( North Pine to Gympie), the Tiaro and Mount Bauple district, Maryborough, and the Pialba district.

In 1916, unused Crown Land near Beerburrum's railway siding was surveyed into portions for returned soldiers to grow pineapples. Some land at Woombye and Palmwoods was also resumed under the Soldier Settlement scheme. Beerburrum Soldier Settlement was the largest soldier settlement area in Australia by 1921, but it had failed by 1932, and helped to produce a glut of pineapples in the process. Queensland production of pineapples doubled between 1932 and 1942, and doubled again between 1952 and 1956, to a total of 12,316 acres (4,984 ha) by the latter date.

In 1947, the Northgate Committee of Direction of Fruit Marketing Cannery (later Golden Circle ), owned and controlled by growers, began operations. Although pineapples boomed in the post war period, marketing issues led to the first Golden Pineapple Week in 1955, along with Miss Golden Pineapple, to promote Maroochy pineapples. In the mid-1950s, the vast majority of Queensland's pineapple growers were in South East Queensland, and two thirds of South East Queensland's production came from three main zones: the Palmwoods-Woombye-Nambour area, the Mary Valley, and the Glasshouse Mountains - Beerwah area.

In South East Queensland in the financial year from 1955 to 1956 the larger pineapple growers (those producing over 2,500 cases per year) grew a smaller percentage of the region's total crop than in Central Queensland. Large producers also grew less of the crop around Palmwoods than in the Mary Valley and Glasshouse areas, which reflected the trend towards small farms in the Maroochy Shire. The average South East Queensland pineapple grower had 10.6 acres (4.3 ha) under pineapples, on a 109-acre farm, and of the top six South East Queensland production areas, Woombye and Palmwoods had the smallest average farm sizes, with the greatest percentage of the farm used for pineapples. In the mid-1950s Woombye ranked third of the top six South East Queensland areas by number of growers, and second of the top six South East Queensland areas by production. In the 1970s, pineapples were Maroochy's third largest agricultural industry after sugar and dairy farming.

Meanwhile, changes were taking place in Australian culture that would impact on tourism. After World War II the use of cars increased, and during the 1950s Australia was second only to the United States in car ownership per head of population. More car travel also led to more garages and fuel stops, and motels and caravan parks were built to accommodate those families taking to the roads for their ever-lengthening holidays. Annual leave increased from one week in 1941 to two weeks in 1945, three weeks in 1963 and four weeks in 1974. Roads were improved, and access was opened up to previously isolated natural attractions. The Bruce Highway was finally surfaced with bitumen all the way from Brisbane to Cairns by 1962, and the Pacific Highway was fully surfaced with bitumen by the late 1960s, which helped bring more New South Wales tourists north into Queensland.

In the Maroochy Shire, the immediate post war period saw a shift in emphasis from traditional agricultural pursuits to coastal tourism. This shift was marked by David Low's election as Maroochy shire chairman in 1952 on a tourism platform. The late 1950s witnessed the first use of terms " Sunshine Coast " and " Gold Coast " to market Queensland's beach culture, and by 1960 the Queensland Government Tourist Bureau was promoting "The Sunshine State" as a nickname for Queensland.

Development on the Sunshine Coast was less intense than on the Gold Coast, and until the 1960s development remained low-key and family oriented, dominated by foreshore and riverside camping grounds, and flats and motels. In many parts of the Sunshine Coast there was a conscious reaction against the style of development that had taken place on the Gold Coast. Like the Gold Coast, on the Sunshine Coast the seaside entertainments of an earlier era have evolved into large scale tourist attractions. However these have developed in a style that is characteristic of the Sunshine Coast hinterland. Here, the focus has been on education and the agricultural heritage and ecology of the region. Attractions besides the Big Pineapple have included: the Big Cow; the Buderim Ginger factory at Buderim which was later relocated to Yandina, Australia Zoo, Forest Glen Deer Park, and the Superbee.

Related to tourism developments is the advertising phenomenon of the Big Thing. Big Things were used in California from the 1920s to lure customers off the highways to stop at food stalls, and they first appeared in Australia in the 1960s. The earliest Australian Big Things included:

- the Big Scotsman, advertising a motel in Adelaide (1963)

- the Big Banana, promoting a roadside banana stall at Coff's Harbour (1964)

- the Big Stubby, a bottle museum at Tewantin (1966). Big Things were usually built by entrepreneurs or by the local community, and almost all featured something that the town or district was famous for, usually flora or produce. Steel framing and fibreglass appear to be the most common building materials.

Establishment of the Sunshine Plantation

It was within this context of pineapples, tourism, and Big Things that Taylor Family Investments Pty Ltd purchased a 23 hectares (57 acres) pineapple farm southeast of Woombye in January 1971, from Gordon Ollett. Bill Taylor had worked at the United Nations for 20 years and had been head of the Development Finance Section, and Lyn Taylor was an interior designer in New York City. They returned to Australia in 1970. In 1971, Bill and Lyn Taylor embarked on what was then a new concept in agri-tourism, using Maroochy's agricultural heritage to attract tourists. The pineapple farm became an agri-tourism project showcasing over 40 varieties of fruits, nuts, spices, and sugar cane: the Sunshine Plantation. The Maroochy Shire Council and the Queensland Government supported the venture, and, on 15 August 1971, the plantation was opened by the State Minister for Labour and Tourism, John Herbert. Mr Herbert claimed that the attraction was unique for the Queensland tourist industry, combining the specific promotion of tourism with the promotion of the area and its tropical production as a whole. A 1980 promotional booklet for the Sunshine Plantation claimed that in 1971 the concept and design was original and unique in the world.

At the opening the Maroochy Shire Council chairman, Eddie de Vere, drove a gold spike into the Plantation Train Ride, a one kilometre two-foot gauge track which still has the steepest incline and sharpest bend of any Queensland passenger rail track. A crane placed the leaves on top of the 16-metre (52 ft) steel-framed fibreglass Big Pineapple that became the symbol of the plantation. Lyn Taylor was responsible for much of the design and layout of the project. The Big Pineapple could be entered, and its interior included a curved staircase, along with an audiovisual story about the pineapple industry and other tropical fruits. Local agricultural producers and co-operatives participated in the development of the displays, most notably the Golden Circle Cannery. A shop and restaurant building was located just north of the Big Pineapple structure, and a cottage was located nearby.