Batavia model on display at the exhibition. Photo by Western Australian Museum.
Leah Tindale, LEGO Bricks show to tour Albany, Kalgoorlie and Geraldton, 26 Feb 2022
THE latest LEGO exhibition is coming to regional Western Australia.
‘Brickwrecks: Sunken Ships in LEGO Bricks’ is coming to Albany, Kalgoorlie and Geraldton after it’s successful opening at the WA Maritime Museum.
LEGO models up to 1.6 metres long are displayed alongside real artefacts from the actual shipwrecks.
Designed and developed by Ryan ‘The Brickman’ McNaught, alongside the WA Museum and the Australian National Maritime Museum, on display will be six large-scale LEGO models, interactive activities, multimedia exhibits, real objects and LEGO build stations for visitors to enjoy.
“This compelling exhibition provides incredible insights into maritime history and human endeavour,” said Culture and Arts Minister David Templeman.
“Regional audiences will enjoy seeing the incredible detail of the models including Titanic and Batavia.”
Models on display include:
- The Uluburun wreck, named after its wreck site. This is one of the oldest known shipwrecks which sank off Cape Uluburun, Turkey, about 1300 BC.
- The Batavia, a Dutch trading vessel that sank in 1629 in the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, off the WA coast.
- The RMS Titanic, the luxury steamship that sank in the North Atlantic in 1912 and
- MV Rena, a Liberian-flagged container ship that sank at Astrolabe Reef, New Zealand, in 2011.
Mr McNaught is the only LEGO certified professional in the southern hemisphere and one of only 14 certified professionals in the world.
“The team spent more than 800 hours, used more than 120,000 LEGO bricks and had a tonne of fun bringing these models to life with lots of minifig details and historical facts,” Mr McNaught said.
“We hope visitors have just as much fun exploring them as we did building them.”
After the regional tour of WA it will head to the Australian National Maritime Museum and will be on display there from December 2022 to April 2023.
The exhibition will be on display at the Museum of the Great Southern, Albany, until May 8, before opening at the Museum of the Goldfields, Kalgoorlie, on May 21 and then the Museum of Geraldton on August 27.
Tickets are on sale at https://museum. wa.gov.au/greatsouthern/brickwrecks
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