LEGO RSV Nuyina Docks at the State Library

It’s sailed across the sea from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and now a massive LEGO model of Australia’s new icebreaker RSV Nuyina has anchored in the State Library’s foyer.

The model is on loan from the Australian Antarctic Division and was brought to life in LEGO by Ryan “The Brickman” McNaught. It’s 3.2 metres long, uses 117,612 LEGO bricks and took a team of three people 328 hours to build. Most recently it was featured on the hit TV show LEGO Masters Australia.

The inspiration to build the model came to Mr McNaught while he was in Hobart in 2016 where he learned that a new icebreaker was under construction. RSV Nuyina is the main lifeline to Australia’s research stations and the central platform of Australia’s Antarctic and Southern Ocean scientific research. ‘Nuyina’ (pronounced noy-yee-nah) means ‘southern lights’ in palawa kani, the language of Tasmanian Aboriginal People.