A year later, we met again, this time in his well-kept garage at Pascoe Vale South in Melbourne, not far from the Windy Hill of Essendon Football Club. He was deeply involved in creating an even larger archeology-inspired model: Lego Pompeii, now on display at the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney. My boys – no less buggy than before – helped two of their mini-figures eat an ice cream before the explosion at the city stadium. “Yes, the old place,” McNaught recalls, speaking for the third time this week. “Only me in the garage, right?” Like all good business, that’s where it all begins. I now have 25 staff and an entire workshop. A lot has changed. “ Ryan McNaught works on a Jurassic World sculpture. Photo: Australian Museum Definitely has. McNaught has evolved from cultural obscurity to co-star of the leading television show, Lego Masters. His latest work – Brickman’s Jurassic World – is on display at the Australian Museum: an exhibition inspired by his team of more than 6-meter bricks, with a 400kg, 4.8-meter model of a Baryonyx, a baby dinosaur. housing, models of movie sets and vehicles and a building area where guests can make their own models from a pile of 2.5-meter pieces. This is where he also gives a series of three Lego masterclasses. When Guardian Australia attends the first, he is at the microphone, working with the mostly middle-aged men who identify as Afols or Adult Lego fans. “Put your hands up in the air if you think Lego Masters is better than MAFS!” offers, before urging: “Yes it is!” Jumping on Nike sneakers in Lego-like colors – bright green, yellow, red – and a short-sleeved block-patterned shirt, McNaught, 49, speaks quickly and accurately as he guides guests to the show. Lots of energy. Piles of excitement. Lots of “unlocking” with elements and numbers: “The T-rex has 400,000 Lego bricks. How do we measure it? We know what we started with and then we measure what is left over “. Lego dinosaurs are internally reinforced with steel and the bricks are cemented together for safety, he tells us. “We do not want it to collapse if a small child hugs the dinosaur.” The solvent is also used in the preparation of methamphetamine, he adds. “So do not lick the dinosaurs.” This is one of the many jokes of the father. “I like to laugh,” he told the Guardian Australia. “But I am also a thinker. “I like to solve problems.” It took more than 6 million bricks to build the Jurassic World, which is on display at the Australian Museum. Photo: Esteban la Tessa ‘We do not want it to collapse if a small child hugs a dinosaur.’ Photo: Anna Kucera My boys – now 17 and 15 – no longer play with Lego. They are all in a pile of plastic bathtubs in the garage that collect dust and spiders. “Do not get rid of it!” says McNaught. “All children around 14 stop playing Lego. They want to leave their toys. Even I did. I pretty much picked it up for cricket, bike and BMX bikes. “ McNaught, who grew up in the Victoria area, returned to Lego shortly before having my own children. “My mom said you better get all your rubbish back – never throw anything out – and with all that came a few boxes of Lego milk.” This reunion with his childhood passion sparked a slow career change: from a well-established IT director in the travel industry with a husband, mortgage and twin boys on the hunt for Lego executives, after McNaught designed a software package that allowed her to control Lego Mindstorms via an iPad. . You can feel that it was not a smooth transition. “I got to a stage where I was working eight hours a day in computer science, building a Lego for eight hours when I got home and starting a family for the other eight hours. He has to give something, right? “ Sign up to receive the Guardian Australia’s weekend culture and lifestyle email When I met McNaught in his garage in 2012, his wife, Melinda, was bringing tea and cookies. He now lives in Essenton with his new partner, Tracy Britten. “We run marathons,” he says. “We are 12 now and we are trying to do it in unusual places. We did the Moscow Marathon in 2018 – we will not do it again – and we did one in North Korea. We did the Falkland Islands, a Disney marathon in America… I ran with Mickey Mouse! “ I would not choose him for a long distance runner in 2012. “Well, when you are middle-aged you have to take care of yourself a little better,” he says. “When your doctor says ‘dude, take a look at your cholesterol, you have to take it seriously.’ In 2019, McNaught signed on as a judge and expert at Nine’s Lego Masters. A big hit on television, the series is now in its third season. Even now, he still does not feel like a media figure. “Most of the time they don’t recognize me unless they’re in a Lego event,” he says. «Χαμίσ [Blake, his Lego Masters co-star] can take all these things to be honest. “Most of the time they don’t recognize me”: Hamish Blake and Ryan McNaught at Lego Masters Australia. Photo: Nine “Apart from TV things, I still do almost the same thing – I make interesting things out of Lego. What has changed is its popularity. “Lego was never what you would call specialized, but it was relatively dark compared to what has been done today.” He says more than two years and 10,000 hours of construction were spent on the Jurassic World project. “We went through that period of Covid when all the exhibition works dried up. I woke up every day thinking about what the children would experience when they first saw it. It made me think about what I would like to see if I were a child. “When I was young, I wanted to start the game for Australia,” said McNaught, a handy cricketer who played for South Yarra in the 1990s. But with Lego, you do not have this obstacle. It is a thing in which everyone can achieve something. It’s relevant, as dreams go. “Now I feel I have the opportunity to become a role model in this way, for other children with dreams.”
