Scale: 1cm = 15 cm
It might not look like it, but HMS Pandora is one of Australia’s best-preserved shipwrecks.
Here archaeologists are carefully excavating the wreck, using a grid to work systematically across the site and documenting everything they find.
Pandora is not a typical Barrier Reef wreck; it didn’t remain stuck on the coral to be pounded to pieces by waves. Instead, Pandora’s crew managed to refloat their ship and anchored in deep water while they battled to save it. Unfortunately, one of the pumps failed, they couldn’t stop the water rushing in and the ship sank, virtually intact, onto the seabed, where it was gradually covered by sand.
Only about a third of Pandora has been excavated. The rest remains hidden, preserved in place, saved by the sand.
Builder’s notes
Designed by: Darren Ballingall
Built By: Darren Ballingall, Greg Koutoumis and Stephan Froden
This model needed to capture the various ways that the wreck was excavated archeologically, so that each process could be observed and understood. It is built using a larger scale than we would normally build to: Instead of for LEGO® minifigures, it is for figures that are 15 bricks in height, much bigger than the usual 4 blocks. Using this scale means all of the other items included had to be built larger too, which took a lot of re-imagining of parts.
Using photographs taken at the actual archaeological dig, we laid out the wreck’s debris on the model just as they were found on the wreck. All of the broken bits from the wreck are rusted and crusted in coral and sea life. The divers were built to create the appearance of defying gravity, to seemingly float in the water.
Model facts
- This model took 120 hours to make
- It uses 6,972 bricks
- It weighs 30 kilograms
1. Bow (front of ship)
2. Stern (back of ship)
3. Pandora’s anchor
4. Bounty’s anchor (recovered from Tahiti)
5. Officer’s cabins (where Tongan clubs were found)
6. Stove
7. Cannon
8. Grid frame to mark areas to excavate