Photographer Brian Rope received an unexpected request from Australia Post on May 3, 2023.
On July 8, 2022, Rope, a former The Canberra Times art critic, had taken a couple of photographs of Brett "Mon" Garling's 2001 statue Blue Heeler Country, known informally as "The Big Blue Heeler."
One photo had his wife Robyn looking at the statue, one did not.
The statue is on the main street of Muswellbrook and commemorates the Australian Cattle Dog (the Blue Heeler) which was bred by Thomas Simpson Hall in the 1840s at "Dartbrook," about 12 kilometres north of the New South Wales town.
Rope said Australia Post had found the image without Robyn on his Flickr site and asked if they could use it as one of their Aussie Big Things series on postcards and numismatic covers which came out on September 4, 2023.
Thus The Big Blue Heeler became part of the Australia Post issue, alongside Canberra's Big Swoop (Yanni Pounartzis's Garema Place sculpture of a big magpie eating a chip), the Big Banana in NSW, the Big Pineapple on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, the Giant Koala in Victoria, the Big Lobster in South Australia, the Giant Murray Cod in Victoria, the Big Tasmanian Devil in Mole Creek, Tasmania, the Big Jumping Crocodile in the Northern Territory and the Giant Ram in Western Australia.
And the amount of money Rope was paid was quite big, too.
Rope said Australia Post "paid me rather handsomely for the rights to use it".
The four-figure sum "bought me a new camera", he said.
This statue was erected in recognition of the contribution made to Australian rural life by the Australian cattle dog and the development of the Blue Heeler in the Upper Hunter.
It was bred by crossing the Australian dingo and the Northumberland Blue Merle, resulting in a dog that could cope with the extreme conditions of the Australian bush and that has the ability to control cattle.
