Food is such an a-peeling part of travel; wherever you go, you have to experience the local fare. But what to do when your town’s famous food is also the most common, boring, and ugly tuber you can think of? You build the world’s biggest potato, that’s what you do.
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Robertson Sebago
Rooted in New South Wales’ Southern Highlands, the small town of Robertson gets a lot of rainfall. Excited yet? Well, this rainfall is responsible for the lush fertile land that makes the region great at growing one thing: Sebago Potatoes.
Sebago are those starchy little whitish coloured spuds that every half-decent supermarket in Australia. They’re good for mashing, roasting and chips, which makes them pretty important to Anglo-Aussie cuisine.
History
It was built in 1977 by a potato farmer, because of course it was. The dream was for it to be home a potato information centre, alas, they ran out of dough. Not enough people were keen to chip in. After a couple of decades of being half-baked tourist venture, the spud was sold to the superette/liquor store owners next door. Inside the superette, you can find lots of spud-themed trinkets for sale.

Experience the Big Potato
The potato has again become hot property with it appearing on real estate listings in 2020. At $920,000 we might need to mash some ideas together to raise the money. But you don’t need to be richer than King Edward to enjoy the Big Potato. Anyone can turnup on their own and enjoy for free. Simply take Root A48 from Lake Illawarra and head inland for about 40 minutes, and keep your eyes peeled.
If you want to enjoy some good-old carb loading, head to Robertson in March for the potato races. Join the burliest of athletes as you carry a 50-kilo sack of fresh carbs as quick as you can through town. Sprouted in 1969, the race has been outlasted the Irish Potato Famine by at least 8 times! With lightly salted children’s races, the Robertson Show is fun for the small fries too.
Experience Robertson
If the potato is too hot to handle, you can fill your pie-hole at Robertson’s famous pie shop; The Famous Robertson Pie Shop. It’s located in a local micronation, The Principality of Laird’s Corner. Before Robertson was a potato place, it was a bit cheesier, so you gouda check out the Old Cheese Factory too.

2 thoughts on “The Big Potato”
Of all the ‘big things’ in Australia this has to be the weirdest
This is hard to beat on the weirdness scale, but there are plenty of other weird ones coming up!