It’s no secret Australians love all things big.

There’s the big banana, the big pineapple and South Australia even has the big lobster.

Now Adelaide might have taken things a tad too far – it has the big cockroach.

The 4m long metal insect has been installed in Rundle Mall after a public campaign to save it from destruction.

The cockroach emerged in the late 1990s, built as a protest by property owners at Lower Light, north of the city, who were angry about the state government’s plans to build a waste dump in the area.

The roach stayed despite the idea of the dump long being abandoned.

But it went missing a few weeks ago, prompting a Facebook campaign to find where it went and to ensure it wasn’t reduced to scrap.

The initial post attracted more than a million hits, apparently from South Australians and insect lovers around the world who feared for the roach’s wellbeing.

It was tracked down to a Two Wells scrapyard where SA media identity Andrew “Cosi” Costello bought it for, fittingly, two slabs of beer.

So the cockroach is now gracing its temporary home in Rundle Mall, Adelaide’s main shopping precinct, with Tourism Minister Leon Bignell declaring the bug will later return to its original home in a paddock off the Port Wakefield Rd.

“The cockroach has been lovingly cleaned up, and will call Rundle Mall home for the next four weeks or so, giving shoppers and city visitors an opportunity to admire its form, and maybe even take a selfie,” the minister said.

AAP