After 18 years, the Big Farmer comes home | ABC Australia

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It took sculptor Marijan Bekic two years to carve a big farmer sculpture for the small Eyre Peninsula rural town of Wudinna.

The council gifted him a block of land for $1 and 12 years later he's still there - now building his own home from sandstone blocks and using the area's pink granite rock for features.

Locals say the sculptor has become part of the narrative and the town's cemetery has some unique headstone carved by Marijan.

He was always artistic as a child but discovered stone sculpting after moving from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Switzerland as a teen.

He migrated to Australia with his wife and family in the early 1990s. His first major sculpture was the Fishermen’s Memorial at Port Lincoln, before taking on the Australian Farmer project.

The Sculpture depicts the community’s men. Women, children and pioneers as were as farming in its good seasons and bad.

Mr Bekic learned of the way of the land when the project was delayed for 18 years after a bad season and lack of community support.

But just as stone endures, he and the project endured and it’s now a drawcard for the rural town.

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