A small town in Victoria, Australia is set to erect a rather unusual monument to its most famous son.

The town of Warracknabeal, nearly four hours outside Melbourne, has a population of 2,400.

The town is known for its annual three-day Easter festival, but in music circles it has another claim to fame - as the birthplace of legendary musician Nick Cave.

Now the town's Arts Council is getting behind a new push to honour the singer and attract more visitors to the town.

Council member Peter Loy is launching a crowd-funded push to commission a 'larger-than-life' sized statue of Cave mounted on a rearing horse, wearing a loincloth and holding a flaming torch.

The idea for the statue has been around since the mid-90s and Cave has already given sculptor Corin Johnson his blessing.

"The homecoming project, as it is called, is something I have been mulling over for 20 years or something," he said in a 2009 interview.

"Which was to get a statue made of me on a horse and put it in the town of Warracknabeal where I was born.

"The idea was to get this huge statue on a the back of a ute (pickup truck) and drive it to Warracknabeal and just leave it there as this gift; this act of supreme generosity and see if they would put it in their town square.

"I have since found out that there is no town square in Warracknabeal, there is just a roundabout - which would be rather good too.

"But if they didn't want it I was just going to drive it into the desert and dump it there somewhere."

Miniature versions of the final design have already been handed to Cave and displayed at the Melbourne Arts Centre.

the full-size piece is expected to cost around AU$200,000 - with any money left over from the crowdfunding push to be donated to Cave Youth Arts Foundation.

The campaign is set to launch in August.