Geoff Barnes
When Australian modeler Geoff Barnes reached out after finding this site by chance, he was closing in on his 80th birthday and still building box dioramas. He wrote, “Over more than a half century, I watched the levels of creativity and expertise reach unprecedented levels. In my extended retirement, I’ve been building dioramas for the Australian National Maritime Museum. Over the years, I did dozens of articles on my boxed dioramas for the now-late-lamented Military Modelling. I note that one of them, Munich 1919, is already on the website.
“As for a biography, in brief, after doing my conscripted service in the air force (fortunately in Malaysia, not Vietnam), I did a short time as a high-school teacher. It didn’t suit me, and as I’d done some film-making at university, I was fortunate to get a job making TV teaching programmes. Then I moved into 36 years as a mainstream documentary film-maker (in the days when you said ‘film’ rather than ‘video’) with the Australian equivalent of PBS, a government-funded broadcaster named the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). History, science, politics, arts, travel, etc. My dioramas were often prompted by locations visited while working, but it was European history that was always high on the agenda. Pre COVID-19, my wife Penny and I used to spend 4 months a year at our place in Surrey, England, so we didn’t have a winter for twenty years. In truth, Sydney doesn’t get all that cold, and today is gloriously sunny. It seems so surreal looking at the sparkling harbour when the news from all over the world is so grim.”
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Bookworm Spitzweg
Christmas 2015
Picnic
Toucoing
Christmas 2012
The images below are pieces that Geoff did in collaboration with others for the Mu-Sea-Um, Australia’s National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour in Sydney. His work is diverse and stunning, and we appreciate him sharing it with us from Down Under!
The RAN Bridging Train at Suvla Bay during the Gallipoli Campaign
Click here for additional views in the blog piece Geoff wrote for the Mu-Sea-Um
Operation Jaywick
The Restoration of Krait