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This Book Celebrates Australia’s Kitsch Roadside Attractions

Writer Samone Bos and illustrator Alice Oehr pay homage to Austalia's 'Big Things'.

If you grew up in Australia, your memories of childhood holidays probably involve fighting with your sibling over a Discman while whizzing past a bunch of oversized roadside attractions. Most prominently there’s the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour, but we’ve also got a bunch of other larger-than-life tourist attractions dotted across our sunburnt country—from a heritage-listed pineapple to a galah and a golden guitar. Writer Samone Bos has teamed up with illustrator extraordinaire Alice Oehr on a new book called The Little Book of Australia’s Big Things, which celebrates ten of these somehow fascinating flora and fauna fibreglass monuments. We caught up with Alice about working on the book for “little kids and big kids,” which features, drawings, facts and activities.

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The Creators Project: What inspired you to work on this project?

Alice Oehr: Australiana has long been something that I’ve loved, so when Samone—the writer and conceiver of the book—approached me, I was immediately into it. I love anything a bit kitsch and our home brand of it is particularly good. I love how weird these big things are and that they exist, so I was thrilled to do a book about them.

How long have you been working on it for?

Samone and I started talking at the end of last year.

What was the most challenging part?

How everything would fit on the page, and to not get to carried away with the amount of Australiana that went in there—we have so many good flowers and animals to draw. Also there are DIY big thing models in there, which almost pushed me over the edge as I’m pretty limited to designing 2D things.

What was the collaborative process like between you and Samone?

Samone calls me her Mr. Squiggle. Basically Samone wrote a lot of hilarious text and provided great ideas about how to illustrate it, and I just did the drawings. I knew early on how I wanted it to look. Lucky for us we were on the same page with everything from the start.

How did you do the illustrations and were there any particular reference points?

The illustrations are a combo of hand and computer illustration. Our "wide brown land" needed some serious poetic license to make it look interesting, so I did a lot of painting for that. Samone and I both love bright patterns and colours, so we looked at Ken Done for the colour palette, and we were admiring the Australiana-themed collections of Romance Was Born and Jenny Kee going on in fashion at the same time we were making the book.

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What’s something that you’ve learned about Australia in the process of creating this book?

My Australian geography is not too flash, so I've learned a lot actually. I've had to familiarise myself with what types of flora and fauna inhabit each state, and understand where all the big things sit on the map. Also the biggest thing from having worked on this book is the desire to do that cliched road trip to see some red sand. The book is full of things that are quite uniquely Australian and like it or not, it makes you quite nostalgic for our country.

The Little Book of Australia’s Big Things is launching tomorrow night, Wednesday September 16, at The Boroughs Store, 345 Lygon St East Brunswick from 6:30pm. A selection of artwork and the book will be for sale. You can find out more about Alice Oehr here and follow her on Instagram here.

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