When I was younger, and my family would travel about various parts of the East Coast of Australia on holiday, we used to pass by and sometimes visit the "Big Things" along the way. Most are parked on or near to highways so they're hard to miss (Ballina's abominal Big Prawn for instance), but some are a big enough draw to be destinations in their own right (the Big Pineapple fits the bill here, definitely). 

The two I remember actually visiting most were the Big Banana and the aforementioned Big Pineapple. The Big Banana itself is okay - you can walk inside it and there's some info/photos on the wall - the big draw was the monorail (!) that trundled up through the attached banana plantation. I recall there being all sorts of strange stuff they added along the way, like a giant triffid amongst the banana trees. (I don't know.) The Big Pineapple was something you could go inside and walk through also, with a big spiral walkway that took you past information and images about pineapples and the plantation nearby. There's a big Macadamia there too, and the best part about my visits that I remember was riding on this mini-train thing that had carriages shaped like macadamia nuts. It's called the Nutmobile apparently! AMAZING. Others i've been to and/or seen include:

• Apple
• Avocado
• (Not the real) Ayers Rock
• Bull
• Guitar
• Macadamia 
• Orange
• Pie
• The terrible, terrible Prawn
• Shell

Not bad. I need to see some more when I return home, I think. Even if I only ever see one more, I think it needs to be this classy wine cask. 

So the more I saw, the more fascinated I became - and I always thought that these were a particular thing to Australia. I know there's all sorts of weird roadside attractions & the like in the USA too, but not all just "big things". However, after watching the Joshua Jackson film One Week, I was surprised to discover that Canada has its own "Big Things". Lots of them! And just like how the Australian ones are imbued with a sense of "man, you'd only find this sort of thing here", the big things here are just rich with Canadiana (and ridiculousness, which comes naturally with the territory of Big Things, wherever they might be). The only one I remember well from the film is the giant Muskoka Chair - there was a paperclip too, I think. I would like to get out and see some of Canada's Big Things - or at least some of the ones I might be able to get to here in Ontario. Like the big TOONIE!

So, this is what you get out of me today, when it's Australia Day and i'm in Toronto.

Some people are surprised when I tell them that i'm not actually from Brisbane, that I grew up in northern NSW - but I feel more of a connection to Brisbane, my adopted home for much of the 2000s. I'm really sad to see what's happening there (and throughout Southeast QLD). I knew the wet season had got a bit out of control and that areas of the state were flooding already - but then everything just hit some sort of tipping point and it's gotten worse before getting better. If you'd like to help, the QLD government has set up a donation page here.

I've heard from most of my friends in Brisbane that they're alright - even though Brisbane's a river city with a lot of low ground near the banks, a lot of the city is also on high ground which is lucky. The suburb I lived in (Fairfield) before moving is on low ground and a lot of streets there are underwater now. Where my best friend used to live (in West End) before moving away is quite well underwater as well. The rain seems to be getting worse closer to my childhood home in Grafton too - my mum emailed and said the river's risen a couple of metres overnight, and it sounds like the rain's not going to stop. I remember a few bad floods from when I was a kid - the waters never reached our house, but came up very close to where we were at the edge of town. The Pacific Highway out of town (both north and south) would always get cut off, and the only way to get from the south of town to the north was by a special passenger train they'd put in service when much of the town went under. It's such a weird thing, living through flooding like that (and multiple times). It never flooded the whole time I lived in Brisbane though, so I can't wrap my head around the city I know being underwater.

Stay safe, Brisbane and everywhere else that's being deluged. Oh yes, summer's just so lovely in Australia except for when the wet season goes rogue. Now, have a video about the kind of storms that are worth singing about, not these rubbishy neverending wet ones.