The call came at dinner-time on a Monday night. As it happened, crispy roast potatoes were part of my dinner – as they frequently are. The excessive consumption of potatoes in my life is part of my heritage.
“Well, you’re no longer the Big Potato Heiress,” my mother said down the line. “The sale settled today.”
For nearly a decade, I’ve known what it feels like to be in a family that owns one of Australia’s iconic Big Things, after my parents bought it from its creator and builder, Jim Mauger, in 2014. I say “iconic”, but when it comes to national recognition of Australia’s big things on breakfast TV shows or YouTube compilations, the Big Potato is all too often left out in favour of its more flashy cousins such as the Big Prawn or Big Banana.
The Big Potato sits in an otherwise vacant lot in the NSW town of Robertson, next to my parents’ grocery store, which they built and have run for 34 years. My childhood was spent in the shadow of the Big Potato.
My first thought after getting the news?
Thank Godfordshire I won’t have to talk to any more commercial radio hosts and pretend their jokes comparing the BP to a poo are funny. I’d even felt obliged to come up with a few of my own over the years: “Yeah, Davo, it reminds me of a number four on the Bristol Health Chart – healthy, robust! You’d be happy to see such a thing drop from your body.”
Cue the Family Feud wrong-answer music.
When I announced the sale on Twitter, my modest group of social media comrades responded in the way I love best: potato puns.
This news has mashed me up. I’m wedged between joy and sadness. Is there no way we could hash this out? Perhaps if we all chip in?
— Rachael (@RachaelHasIdeas) September 12, 2022
Yet one person who never sees the joke in the Big Potato is my father, Neil Tait. He loves the Big Potato. Really loves it. Selling it was a step towards reluctant retirement, and he’s not quite ready to say goodbye.
“I’m devastated,” he tells me. “Every time I put the shop signs out on that land, I nearly start crying. I’m so proud of it.
“People think it’s a joke, but it’s not. It’s so good for business in this town. It’s really underestimated.”
It’s been a big couple of years for La Grosse Pomme de Terre. It’s had all sorts of attention. Earlier this year it won Australia’s shittest big thing. Then there was an appearance on Channel Ten’s The living room (national television!).
Yet the most exciting thing is that Hollywood came to town for the first time since George Miller brought Babe to Robertson in the mid-1990s.
Nicole Kidman and Judy Davis dropped by to film a scene in their Apple TV show ROAR right in front of the Big Potato. The dialogue in their scene summed up what’s so special about it:
“It’s so stupid,” says Davis’s character, Rosie.
“Well, it makes you smile, nothing stupid about that,” says Kidman’s character, Robin.
Maria Sava is the owner of the local bookstore, Book Nook 2577, which is across the road from the Big Potato.
“The Big Potato is a great source of fun and pride as every weekend people arrive and take photos with their families and friends,” she says. “It is also a symbol of our great farming heritage.
“Being across the road, the Book Nook enjoys the steady business derived from those visitors and their genuine curiosity in the landmark.”
What does the future hold for the town’s fairly large tuber?
The land is zoned for development and Robertson – only two hours from Sydney and down the mountain to Wollongong – has been a particularly attractive spot for tree-changers since Covid.
“I hope it’s not demolished,” my dad says. “If the new owner wants to use the land for something else, I hope they’ll move the Big Potato to the nearby Pinkwood Park, across the road and about 100 metres away.”
My dream is that the new owners (and heiress, if there is one) realise how special this construction of cement and soil is. Generations have grown up with it as a landmark and a sign of stability in a place that’s forever changing. It’s been a constant in our town for more than 45 years.
May it last at least another 45.
• The movie of Melanie Tait’s play The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race is due to be shot in Robertson later this year – with a strong supporting role for the Big Potato.
