When plans were unveiled for a major public artwork straddling the main street of the small Northern Tablelands town of Dorrigo not everyone was thrilled.
Pretty, quaint Dorrigo sits on the edge of an escarpment, 1000 metres above sea level looking out over the Bellingen valley and rolling pastoral land. “For a few years I had been going over a bridge coming into town and looking at the park and thinking how nice it would be to have something there,” he said. Dorrigo’s only other statuary is a soldier on the War Memorial, which toppled over when a car ran into it last year .Wright decided to gift $300,000 for a sculpture. He contacted Townsend, director of Creative Road Art Projects, and they walked around the streets. After the bushfires “there were empty shops,” she says.
“The vast majority do not want this ugly metal sculpture hanging over our heads,” wrote Michele Zbudowski. “When the first pedestrians are knocked over by a motorist gawking at the spaceship floating over our town, what then?”