When the brand installed the billboard in early November in the hometown of its Most Ordinary Rig winner Dan Leyden, it held a competition encouraging people to take a photo at the billboard in their budgie smugglers which were shared on social media to an international audience. 

The first 50 people to take their photo in budgie smugglers and tag it on social media with the hashtag #smugglingmountisa would receive a voucher. The best photo would be chosen to be the design of the new billboard. 

The billboard attracted all types of people; from rugby players, miners, cowboys and cowgirls, locals, tourists, this journalist, and even a coal seam gas activist, who have photos there in their smugglers.

The billboard was due to remain until December but was taken down sometime last week. 

Budgy Smuggler’s general smuggling manager Brenden Hartmann confirmed the brand was working with the agency that owns the billboard to set dates for the new design. 

“We plan to have a vote on which picture was the best in the next few weeks. It’ll be interesting to see what the public thinks is the winner.” 

He said the company was pleased with the “awesome response” and the “hilarious” Instagram pictures. 

“It was great to see that it wasn’t just people from Mount Isa getting pictures in front of it too. 

“We had people make a trip from the coast and even some people from Sydney went up to check it out. How crazy is that?” 

It had taken longer to distribute vouchers to the winners due to social media privacy settings, but they would get their reward “for smuggling excellence,” he said. 

The North West Star has created its own poll judging from the gallery of photographs above.

Budgy Smuggler has its own separate vote but may take the results from this poll into account.