The fourth episode on our mini-series on the maritime history of Australia takes us to Perth and the workshop of Gerry Westenberg. Gerry has been hand-crafting scale model ships for well over 50 years and has built more than 130 in that time. He started this lifelong job by trying to modify a 1/600 scale Airfix kit of HMS Ajax to be HMAS Perth...with mixed success. Over time he has improved his skills and found a scale that works for him – 1/192 - based on the Empirical scale of 1 inch to every 16 feet. Over the years Gerry has built ships such as RMS Queen Mary, a Roman bireme, an Egyptian Royal Barge, HMS Hood, HMAS Sydney I, II, III and IV, RY Britannia, and HMS Barham, to name but a few. He has had two exhibitions held at the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle, the first in 2019,

with the second held in 2021, whilst a third exhibition will commence on April 8th this year running for approximately 3 months. The centrepiece of Gerry's collection consists of over 40 Australian fighting ships tracing all major classes from the inception of the RAN to today’s modern fleet. To find out more Dr Sam Willis visited Gerry at his workshop.

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