Eric Worrell’s Australian Reptile Park first opened in 1958, moving to its current location of Somersby on the NSW Central Coast in 1996. Included in this move was a 26-metre-long dinosaur named Ploddy.

Ploddy’s bright yellow visage makes him immediately recognisable along the M1 from Sydney to Newcastle today. This footage from the 1964 Cinesound Review newsreel ‘Operation Crocodile’ is serious in tone, the black-and-white film stripping the novelty from a giant yellow brontosaurus as he silently looms in the background.

It’s hard to imagine that the atmosphere wasn’t at least a little eerie, with men packing Land Rovers and trailers full of supplies for an expedition to Northern Queensland while the ancient relative of the animals they’ll be bringing back judges them quietly from so far above.

Ploddy is, technically, the oldest Big Thing in Australia. While the title is often credited to the Big Banana, Ploddy was built in 1963, a year before the fruit in Coffs Harbour.