This year has been a super busy year for us with travel for shows. We’ve been to Melbourne for Model Expo, Wollongong for the NSW Model Show, Brisbane for QMHE and Adelaide for the SA Model Expo, plus a few others in between.

For the final show of the year, I travelled up to Canberra for the annual ACT Scale Model Society’s ScaleACT model show. We’ve been attending ScaleACT since 2018 and it is always a pleasure to head up to our nation’s capital.

With the Ute loaded up with stock and entries for the competition, I left home at 4:30am on the Friday and drove just over 8 hours up the Hume Freeway, arriving at the first stop, the National Dinosaur Museum in Gold Creek, ACT, just after 12:30pm.

 

 

I always make sure to drop into the Dinosaur Museum each year I head up. I drive past the door, so it’d would be rude if I didn’t stop! There were a number of new fossil displays and some changes to some of the older exhibits which was exciting to see.

From there, I headed over to Toyworld in the Canberra suburb of Fyshwick. Toyworld ACT has been a strong supporter of our products and brand as a whole since 2018 and they feature of big rack up front and centre in their dedicated hobby section.

If you ever head up to Canberra, I thoroughly recommend heading our to Toyworld in Fyshwick to check it out. The range of hobby tools and model kits is very impressive, with new and exciting products arriving regularly.

I ended up purchasing some of the new Blokees Transformer model kits. These are cool models with a ‘super deformed’ style about them. I ended up getting Optimus Prime plus 3 of the blind boxes. I was hoping to get Grimlock, but ended up with Mixmaster, Cliff Jumper and Starscream.

 

From there, I headed to my hotel to check in, grabbed a bubble tea from the nearby shopping centre and then headed out to the venue, Thoroughbred Park in Lyneham.

Setup went smoothly and I had everything set up completely by 8pm. Entries for the competition were not until the next morning, so I finished up, headed back to the hotel and then promptly fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

 

 

Saturday started with a quick bite to eat from the nearest McDonald’s, then I headed back out to the venue to enter the models into the competition and get ready for the first days trade. I personally entered 15 models of my own into the competition, 1 of my wife Katrina’s models, and 3 more from friend Paul from Cleve in SA who asked my to take them to Canberra on his behalf as a favour when I saw him at the SA Model Expo.  

The entire first day was busy from start to finish. A lot of product was sold and I got to catch up with some of my good friends and met a lot of new ones that I have only spoken to online.

 

Over at the Adelaide Moulding & Casting tables, the guys from Anest Iwata Australia were on site demonstrating their airbrushes and were using our paints to show off what their equipment could do. 

 

 

5pm rolled around and it was time to pack up for the day and head back to the hotel. I was invited to head out with a heap of people for a few rounds of catch up drinks, but I had to decline the invite because it had been a long day and I was still exhausted from the day before.

After a night of something that resembled sleep, it was time to check out of the hotel and head back out to the venue (via McDonald’s again) for the second and final day.

 

 

The advantage of being a trader is that I can usually get in to the venue early so I did and spent a good hour looking at all the entries on the tables. I was very impressed with the jump in quality compared to last year show – a very marked improvement in all categories!

Sunday is usually quiet at first at most shows, and this was no exception but things started to get busier around lunch time. Lots more products were sold over the following few hours and then at around 3pm, it was time to start packing up.

This year, ScaleACT has moved to the Open system of judging, where the models are judged individually and awarded a Gold, Silver or Bronze (GSB). Best of Awards were still given out, but the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd have superseded with this new GSB system. Due to this, the award announcements at the end were a little different with each category having multiple GSB winners in each level (Rookie, Standard, and Master).

I ended up winning 8 Bronzes and 1 Silver for my entries (4 Bronzes were for my cars, the rest for my Dinos), Katrina’s entry won a Gold in Mecha (Rookie level), and Paul’s cars got a Gold and a Bronze.

 

And Katrina's entry : 

 

 

So with everything packed back up into the Ute, the medals collected and some last minute photo opportunities done, I said farewell to Canberra for another year and starts the drive home, crawling into my own bed at 12:40am on Monday morning.

 

And then next thing I know, the alarm is going off at 5:30am and I’m back at the factory at 6am to start a new week of making paint and packing orders.

ScaleACT is always a great show to attend for us and this year was no different. I got to see a lot of great people whom I only ever get to see a this show plus got to meet a heap of new people at the same time. The show was very successful for us trade wise, with a LOT of product sold. Even the switch to the new GSB Open system for the model competition itself was very welcomed and handled very professionally by the ScaleACT committee.

If you ever get the chance, ScaleACT is definitely a show that I recommend people attend at least once. Good venue, great competition and fantastic people.

And with that, I will leave you with some photos of some of the models that caught my eye at the show.

 

 

Keep on modelling!

- Scott