The Australian Farmer

A monument in granite

Beside the Eyre Highway in Wudinna stands one of the most genuinely artful of Australia's 'big things': The Australian Farmer, an eight-metre, roughly seventy-tonne figure carved from the district's own granite. Conceived by the Wudinna community in the 1990s to honour the settlers who farmed this hard country, the sculpture was carved by artist Marijan Bekic and his son David over two years and unveiled on 17 April 2009.

Read the stone

It rewards a slow look. The figure is deliberately stylised: the head crowned by the sun, sheaves of grain carved through the body, and sheep worked into the base — wheat and wool, the two industries that built the town. Bekic spent time in the district before designing it, and locals will tell you he caught something true about the place: the farmer stares patiently into the distance, waiting on the weather, as every farmer here always has.

Granite country

The sculpture is also the perfect introduction to Wudinna's other claim to fame — this is granite country, with some of Australia's most impressive inselbergs scattered through the surrounding paddocks. Mount Wudinna, one of the largest granite monoliths in the country, is 10 km north-east, and the wave-walled Pildappa Rock is a short drive further on.