Ranging from miniature to life-sized, there are plenty of places to see local ingenuity on show.

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Friends Adam Wieja and Peter Sawyer have been creating models since 2011, when they got together to create a 1:32 scale model of the HMS Victory – the flagship of Admiral Horatio Nelson’s fleet during the Battle of Trafalgar.

About five years ago, the pair started work on a 3D-printed model of a space shuttle, as well as a display of Shakespeare alongside a young student and a border collie. Both projects cost about $40,000.

At 76 years of age, Wieja said he created the models to inspire creativity and curiosity from passersby and neighbours.

“I refuse to sit in front of a TV like every retiree and die on a couch,” he told the Eastern Melburnian. “My intention is to just be busy.”

The pair are putting the final touches on getting the space shuttle display to simulate a takeoff, complete with a fog machine and several moving parts.

Where: 37 Jarma Road, Heathmont

At 85 years of age, Warburton resident Bob Prudhoe still lives in a treehouse.

Bob created his first abode by hand in 1975, after returning home from a lengthy journey across the UK and Europe in his 20s and to Tibet and Nepal in his 30s.

Inspired by his connection with Tibetan culture and Buddhism, he constructed “Thangboche” at the age of 35.

In 1992, the structure burnt down, with Prudhoe again travelling overseas. In 2008, he bought another block of land in Warburton – the site of the old Warburton railway station master’s house – and got to work building another home, this time amongst the gum trees.

Now three storeys high, the structure can be viewed from the outside.

Where: 3600 Warburton Rail Trail, Warburton

Costing $1.2 million to build in 2007 and commissioned as part of the Eastlink public art program, Hotel Eastlink was created by acclaimed artist Callum Morton and is a 20-metre-tall art sculpture designed to look like an operational hotel.

Situated in an open field, if you were to stop and look at it overnight, you’d see lights turn on and off, creating the illusion that hotel patrons are staying in the hotel. However, the inside of the construction has no rooms and instead has a staircase for maintenance.

Where: Along the Eastlink Freeway, between Greens Road and Bangholme Road, Dandenong South

Melbourne-born artist and architect Justus Jörgensen and his wife Lily – one of Victoria’s first female anaesthetists – purchased about 12 acres of land in Eltham in 1934, quickly getting to work developing an artists’ community with his friends, complete with houses, halls, studios, galleries and stables.

Designed to look like a European medieval village, resident artists built all of the infrastructure by hand, using stone, clay, mudbrick, and salvaged materials from demolished Melbourne buildings, such as timber wharf posts and Victorian-era window frames.

Montsalvat is open to the public from Wednesdays to Sundays from 10am to 4pm, with a $15 fee for adults and a $10 charge for children or concession holders.

Where: 7 Hillcrest Avenue, Eltham

Five years after the June 2021 storms damaged 92 kiln-fired clay sculptures hidden among the trees, the gates at William Ricketts Sanctuary reopened in early August.

The works at the sanctuary focus on Aboriginal stories and legends, as well as the First Nations peoples of Central Australia.

However, a number of academics, including Indigenous scholars Marcia Langton and Bruno David, have criticised Ricketts’ work at the sanctuary and his approach to Aboriginal culture. In 2003, the pair published a paper denouncing the garden as a “primitivist theme park” depicting an “imaginary … Dream Time”.

Where: 1402 Mount Dandenong Tourist Road, Mount Dandenong

Thumbnail Image Credit: Rory Hyde