When one of our exhibitions was down in Hobart a couple of years back I was down by the docks there and there was this big red ship — really unusual looking — and you know they were loading supplies and containers and all sorts of bits and pieces on it — basically the Australian supply ship for Antarctica.
So how we take all of our scientific gear and food and supplies to all of the team that are down in Antarctica.
It’s basically been the lifeblood to Antarctica forever.
And of course it’s gotten older and it’s had a really tough life and all that kind of stuff so it’s time to replace it so years ago they knew about the replacement of this ship and they started a tender process.
So I contacted the Australian Antarctic Division and a fantastic team of wonderful dedicated people down there gave me lots of information — photos, pictures, plans — all sorts of really cool stuff about this amazing purpose-built ship designed for Australian Antarctic operations.
We’ve recreated that in Lego and brought it to life by cutting it in half so you can see everything that’s happening with it.
All the scientists are in there doing crazy stuff. You know they’ve hacked away an alien in an ice cube that they’re found down in Antarctica and we've got lots and lots of jokes and fun stuff as well as obviously the serious scientific side to it.
It’s an icebreaker and this thing can travel through metres of compacted ice and ice floe.
It’s the weight that comes down on the ice that causes it to break.
So we’ve wanted to show that off and to do that we've basically got the ship cresting on a wave with its bow out of the water, some huge Antarctic seas, which allows us to show the front of the ship.
So that’s kind of how we’ve tried to bring it to life.