juice it up

Made of fibreglass, The Big Pineapple stands 16 metres tall at the entrance to the plantation. It was built in 1971 when calculators were cutting edge technology. The Sunshine Coast and Tourism Queensland celebrated the opening of Queenland’s Big Thing. Visitors in their thousands enjoyed the iconic stature and views from the observation deck.

At the time this area was surrounded by rich farming land growing sugar cane, and of course pineapples. The Big Pineapple is now heritage listed and cherished by Government, Queensland Tourism and the Sunshine Coast community along with many visitors who visit the area on holiday. Along with the iconic ‘big fruit’, the Pineapple Train and the railway tracks are also heritage listed.

Every Queenslander knows The Big Pineapple and most have childhood memories of this icon.

The inspiration for the repaint was naturally to represent as close as possible a real pineapple. The previous finish was tired and ready for a revamp. Once the surface was prepared it was topcoated with Resene Hi-Glo gloss finish for maximum impact in a palette of Resene Turbo (energetic yellow), Resene Surfs Up (deep summer blue), Resene Havoc (pure red), Resene Crusoe (electric green), Resene Black (lamp black) and Resene White. Getting the combination of colours and blending them for just the right look required painstaking attention to detail.

And now that the paintwork is complete, The Big Pineapple looks good enough to eat.

This project won the Resene Total Colour Landscape Award.

The judges thought: “the sheer scale of this project combined with the attention to detail needed to transform a huge grey shape into an instantly recognisable pineapple is spectacular. This project has been given a new lease of life with a beautiful application of colour and paint technique. Using a limited palette of colours, these have been painstakingly blended piece by piece to recreate a pineapple. With visitors making sure this landmark project is on their ‘must see’ list, there is a huge community vested interest into the colour palette.

It’s an impressively artistic and authentic use of colour on a local icon.”