Situated at Kimba, half way across Australia, the Big Galah was built by Roger Venning and family. It is eight metres high, two and a half metres wide and weighs over two tonnes. It is constructed of steel, high tension bird wire, fibreglass and gel coated and was erected in July 1993.
The Galah, Eolophus roseicapilla, also known as the Rose-breasted Cockatoo, Galah Cockatoo, Roseate Cockatoo or Pink and Grey, is one of the most common and widespread cockatoos in Australia.
The Galah is pale grey on top and pink below. The male has dark brown eye and female has red eye. Its crest varies from pink in Western Australia to white throughout the rest of Australia. Juvenile Galahs have a grey breast and a grey eye-ring.
Often seen in large flocks of between 30 to 1000 birds. In rain they like to hang upside down from branches or power lines, wings spread wide to catch the rain.
Galahs will often congregate and forage on foot for food in open grassy areas.
Galahs are found throughout Australia, except in the very dry desert regions, and dense forests areas.
The Galah, And Oolah The Lizard
OOLAH the lizard was tired of lying in the sun, doing nothing. So he said, "I will go and play." He took his boomerangs out, and began to practise throwing them. While he was doing so a Galah came up, and stood near, watching the boomerangs come flying back, for the kind of boomerangs Oolah was throwing were the bubberahs. They are smaller than others, and more curved, and when they are properly thrown they return to the thrower, which other boomerangs do not.
Oolah was proud of having the gay Galah to watch his skill. In his pride he gave the bubberah an extra twist, and threw it with all his might. Whizz, whizzing through the air, back it came, hitting, as it passed her, the Galah on the top of her head, taking both feathers and skin clean off. The Galah set up a hideous, cawing, croaking shriek, and flew about, stopping every few minutes to knock her head on the ground like a mad bird. Oolah was so frightened when he saw what he had done, and noticed that the blood was flowing from the Galah's head, that he glided away to hide under a bindeah bush. But the Galah saw him. She never stopped the hideous noise she was making for a minute, but, still shrieking, followed Oolah. When she reached the bindeah bush she rushed at Oolah, seized him with her beak, rolled him on the bush until every bindeah had made a hole in his skin. Then she rubbed his skin with her own bleeding head. "Now then," she said, "you Oolah shall carry bindeahs on you always, and the stain of my blood."
"And you," said Oolah, as he hissed with pain from the tingling of the prickles, "shall be a bald-headed bird as long as I am a red prickly lizard."
So to this day, underneath the Galah's crest you can always find the bald patch which the bubberah of Oolah first made. And in the country of the Galahs are lizards coloured reddish brown, and covered with spikes like bindeah prickles.
