Do the truffle shuffle to Needles, and see if you can sniff out Doug the Truffle Dog!

The 2.5m-tall pooch stands guard outside the world-famous Truffle Farm, home to Tassie’s finest black truffles. Angular and proud, Big Dougie was installed to celebrate the farm’s 25th anniversary in 2024.

A king-sized canine and the fruiting body of a subterranean ascomycete fungus – how wonderful!

Big Dougie pays tribute to the real Doug the Truffle Dog, who is renowned for his unparalleled ability to sniff out scrumptious truffles. In fact, Douglass unearthed his very first truffle when he was just 12 weeks old.

There must’ve been quite a kerfuffle when he found that truffle!

For the ludicrously low price of $180, you can join Dougie on one of his forages, then gorge yourself on a sumptuous cheese-and-truffle pizza beneath a canopy of stars afterwards.

I usually go for a caviar-and-23ct gold leaf pizza with side of garlic bread drizzled with Saffron-infused olive oil and served by a shirtless Lithuanian peasant, but that sounds pretty good.

The succulent truffle meal comes with a goblet of locally-sourced beer or wine, but if you’d prefer a coffee, that’s alright – The Big Coffee Pot is just a few minutes down the road in Deloraine.

The Truffle Farm’s store offers an expansive range of truffle honey, truffle salt, truffle mustard, truffle creme, truffle oil and a truffle partridge in a truffle tree. But it’s hard to concentrate on exquisite truffle-based products when there’s an enormous dog structure outside, begging for your attention.

The steel-shaping savants at Tassie Metal Art created Big Dougie, and were also responsible for Eli the Baby Wombat and Quincy the Spotted Quoll.

I won’t say which of their Bigs I love the most – I don’t want to truffle any feathers!