Australia's Big Things, from the banana at Coffs Harbour to the pineapple at Woombye to the prawn at Ballina, make up an unofficial roadside sculpture network dedicated almost exclusively to imported fruit and animals. In this 2024 episode of the comedy web series Go Figure, host Rob Braslin stands at the foot of the Big Banana and asks the question: where are the Big Things for the fruits that were already here?

Although this content style usually slots into scrolling feeds full of cooking shortcuts and life hacks, this four-minute clip uses the same real estate for something different. While the Big Banana's ageing fibreglass looms overhead, Rob in a galah-print shirt argues that we have been making Big Things of, not the wrong fruit exactly, but not all the right fruits either.

It's hard not to wince a little when the vox pops start and locals gamely offer pomegranate and, sometimes, finger lime when asked to name a native fruit. Meanwhile, above them on Gumbaynggirr Country a giant yellow banana from somewhere else entirely stands as the only Big Thing around.

Although it feels like an Australian institution that has always been there, the Big Banana was built in 1964, which on the timescale of the Davidson plum is roughly yesterday. Rob’s pitch – backed by concept art of a googly-eyed Big Davidson Plum and a giant Big Bush Tomato dwarfing a beach – is witty and sardonic. It’s a laugh-at-yourself joke precisely because he refuses to propose the native fruits be dignified as ‘tasteful’ public art and instead makes them as daggy and beloved as the imported-fruit monuments they'd be joining.

The clip isn’t saying that the Big Banana shouldn't exist; it's asking that we think about what we choose to make Big, and why.