Behold a very Big Potato. It's rusty. It's lumpy. And its builder, Jim Mauger, will be the first to tell you that it looks like ‘a big turd’.

Mauger built the Big Potato in Robertson, NSW, in the late ‘70s, and his defence against the critics has held up for nearly 50 years: ‘Well, did you ever build anything that's going to be of that order of magnitude?’

It's the perfect regional Australian comeback: cheerful, unanswerable and a bit melancholy. What this clip from Camille Hardman's documentary Big Dreamers captures so well is the straight face behind the joke. The camera isn't condescending in the way it frames a man against an oversized tuber, not making Mauger into a punchline.

Mauger’s creation helped put Robertson on the map. For a town on a regional highway, that in itself is a Big Thing.

Explore more of Australia’s Big Things