Its length, from the tip of the abdomen to the end of its front legs was an astonishing 42cm (16.5 inches). Length from its head to the end of its abdomen would have been approximately 25cm (almost 10 inches)

To give you a better idea of how big that is, here's how it would look beside some familiar objects - a CD, an Australian one-dollar coin, and a pencil.

Of course I took a lot of photos of it. I'm also very grateful to the awesome Shane Lennard from the Hunter Valley, for letting me use some of his superb titan photos.

So they don't eat people or dogs. Then what do they eat?
Their food plants include eucalyptus (gum trees), babyberry, bramble, Photinia, and cypress pine.

Where you might find them
Titans live along the east coast of Australia. I've drawn red dots on a map to show the locations of people who've contacted me after finding one, with most of the dots ending up near Sydney/Central Coast and Brisbane/Sunshine Coast. Of course, there are a lot of people living in those areas so that could explain the concentrations of sightings.

Please note that this map is nothing like a comprehensive map of their range and should not be interpreted as one. I also can not verify the accuracy of identifications of titans from all of these sightings. But I thought it was interesting enough to put online.

It's been interesting hearing from people who claim to have found titans. Their locations lie within the range where the literature says you'd find titans. I've heard from folks in Victoria too, who claim to have found titans. I can not be sure they found titans, although some experts claim that titans can also be found in Victoria.

A bit more information about them
Titans normally hang around among the high branches but occasionally an injured one is found on the ground near one of their food trees. The males don't grow as big as the females and they also have fully-developed wings. Therefore the males are good fliers. It's possible that these insects, although not the heaviest insects in the world, are the longest insects in the world. (You can only feel grateful that fire ants don't grow this big)

Female titans lay a lot of eggs, which they flick away from themselves onto the ground. This scatters the eggs so the young will have a chance of finding another tree.

It's not known if these insects are endangered because their camouflage is so good - they really do look like a thin branch - that it's hard to know if there are a lot of them in the wild or not.

E.T. phone home: A mature female titan alongside a flip-open mobile phone

Other stick insects in Australia
There are over a hundred species of stick insects in Australia. Identifying them isn't easy - unless of course they're as long as your arm, which certainly narrows the options down. The picture below shows an unidentified species from the many smaller Australian stick insects.