THE THINGS YOU SEE! with (TRUTHFUL) PHIL BIANCHI
READYMIX MADE ITS MARK A round Australia there are many big things of novelty architecture including the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour, Big Cane Toad in Queensland (not talking about Clive), Big Mushroom in the ACT and let’s not forget the Biggest Liars in Canberra. In WA one would immediately think Big Iron Ore. Not so, the biggest of the big should go to the long forgotten Readymix Diamond on the Eyre Highway near Caiguna. What’s that you say? You’ve never heard of it? Where have you been? In your defence many of you probably weren’t born then. So what’s it all about? Way back in the 1960s the WA government let a contract for the sealing of a 500km section of the Eyre Highway from Balladonia to Eucla. The Readymix Group were granted the contract. At the halfway mark of the project, which Top: Readymix Aerial Landmark. Bottom: Readymix logo on Google Earth.
was near Caiguna, the company had one of the quarry surveyors mark out the company logo on the ground and then Allan Hoare, the grader driver, graded it. It took him a weekend to do the job. The diamond shaped sign became the world’s largest sign measuring 3.2km x 1.6km with the word Readymix within it. Each letter was 240 metres (790ft) high by 180 metres (590ft) wide, with a line thickness of 12 metres (40ft). You have to admit these are some staggeringly impressive statistics. The Readymix logo is a geoglyph. What’s a geoglyph you ask? It’s a flash name for a large design or motif produced on the ground. Technically the Readymix logo is a negative geoglyph because it’s etched into the ground. Why did the company carve out the logo? Reading between the lines it seems the company wanted to publicise the project and itself, but not wishing to offend or get into strife, made mutterings that Truthful Phil would be proud of, saying the long, straight stretches of the logo offered emergency runways for aircraft going to and from WA. At the time of construction, it was the largest advertising sign in the world and it appeared in the Guinness Book of Records between 1972 and 1991, as the world's largest advertising sign and the world's largest letters. In the 1970s domestic passenger aircraft would circle the sign and tip the plane so travellers could see it. A number of people have told me they recall impressive views with their aeroplane doing circles over the site when flying to and from the east. Okay, enough of the dry technical stuff, where is the logo? The turn off the highway
118
| Western 4W Driver #122
