It all started with a tissue box. This is the story of how that tissue box blossomed into a model-making spree that would make Wayne Nicholls the king of the Victorian craft shows – and what a tale it is.
Around the turn of the century, Wayne Nicholls’s wife asked him to make her a tissue box. He had a few bits of wood lying around and thought he could make something out of those. After that, it was a toilet roll holder. Then he really went to town on what may be the fanciest potato storage box ever made. By now, the pattern was set: a dedication to extreme perfection of detail and the idea that he could make anything out of wood.
On to model-making
Moving on to models, Wayne first made a few toys, by which time he had fallen into the routine of going out most evenings to his small garage in northern Geelong, about 70km from Melbourne, and making stuff. He didn’t use sophisticated and expensive machinery, though; that’s not Wayne’s style.
“Too easy” is a phrase that pops up again and again in this classic Aussie yarn-spinner’s vocabulary. He made his first productions with a Black & Decker drill and a bunch of hand tools.
“I don’t really want to make life easy for myself. If it’s hard, that makes it worth it,” he says.
It also puts him ahead of the competition.
“Who else would go to the trouble?” he asks with a laugh.
Wayne’s first excursion to showing his work was with balance toys that he entered in the 2002 and 2003 Geelong shows. Although they pale.
