‘There he goes with the carrot’: how walking the streets with a giant papier-mache vegetable made Nathan a Melbourne legend

Melbourne's ‘carrot man’, Nathan, has been carrying the giant prop through the city's streets for years. Photograph: People of Gertrude Street

If you look carefully on a cobbled street in Paris’s Montmartre, you will find a tribute to one of Melbourne’s most beloved identities. A tiny stencil artwork on a building wall depicts the back of a man in a checked shirt holding a giant carrot. Melburnians will instantly recognise the man who for years has roamed the inner-city streets holding a papier-mache carrot sprouting green leaves.

For the artist behind the work, Melbourne-based VKM, the city’s “carrot man” was the perfect subject.