The Wo-Man Sculpture is a larger-than-life sculpture made by Dave Thurston. Wo-Man is both man and woman, depending which side you view it from. From the road, the sculpture is a man. From behind, the sculpture is a woman.
It is located at what used to be the halfway roadhouse on the Putty Road. The Putty Road used to be a popular route heading north via the New England Highway. From Sydney, the alternative was to tackle the busy and often slower Pacific Highway up to Hexham near Newcastle to join the New England Hwy heading west towards Singleton.
As the Pacific Highway became a freeway, and more recent years, the addition of the Hunter Expressway, the Putty Road is a slow, mostly single lane, and winding long way to go. The photo here is from 2012, more than a year before the Hunter Expressway opened, on our way home to Brisbane. We were also leaving from Penrith making he Putty an option considering back then.
The sculpture is still there today (2024), and from what I can work out, Dave still cooks up bacon and egg or sausage and egg rolls. There are other sculptures to look at while you wait for your roll and munch it down.
Today, the Putty Road can still be an interesting alternative. As the freeway and highway improvements continue (especially the Pacific Highway all the way to Queensland), less traffic uses the Putty as a shortcut for travelling. A stop at the Big Wo-Man Sculpture is one reason to consider driving the Putty if you haven’t done so before.