KFC to celebrate 50th anniversary in Australia with free chicken and gigantic Sydney Harbour bucket

A gigantic chicken bucket is set at Circular Quay in Sydney Harbour today as KFC celebrate's its 50th anniversary in Australia. 

Thousands of KFC-lovers are expected to flock to the harbourside site between midday and 3pm today as the fast food chain marks the occasion. 

The six-metre-tall, seven-metre-wide bucket has been erected next to the Overseas Passenger Terminal. 

KFC will also be giving out free pieces of its Original Recipe chicken served in “limited edition 50th buckets” to anyone who attends the event while a DJ plays music from the past 50 years.

The world-famous KFC, known as Kentucky Fried Chicken when it launched in Guildford on April 27 1968, began with an Australian staff base of just 25 people.

It served Colonel Sanders’ renowned fried chicken for as little as $1 in deals appropriately named the ‘Thrift Box’.

In the half-century since then, the brand has grown to have more than 640 stores nationwide, serving more than two million customers every week with locally grown produce.

It also employs around 35,000 Australians, or one in every 700 people nationally – including one in every 45 young people, with the average age of employees being just 17.

The famous fried chicken chain has become so popular in Australia that a ‘KFC appreciation society’ was launched on the Gold Coast and one bride, Elizabeth Elvers, was late to her own wedding because she wanted to stop at a KFC store to take photos in her dress.