Jamie Baldock from northern Tasmania is looking in the window of a rustic hut.
"I've spent many a cold winter's night in there, with snow all over the roof and two-foot-deep outside," he said.
The hut sits on a table in his shed in Quoiba, near Devonport, and is a detailed miniature replica of Basil Steers Hut 2, which is located on the February Plains in Tasmania's high country.
Mr Baldock has been making model Tasmanian mountain huts for about three years, working on them in "little bits and pieces" around his full-time job as an electrician.
"I'm a bit time-poor, but I like to use my time wisely, so rather than watching telly I like to build stuff like this," he said.
"It's a labour of love … I'm very proud of them."
Chance find ignites new passion
Always a keen outdoorsman, Mr Baldock had been visiting Tasmania's mountain huts for years before an unlikely experience in the bush sparked an even greater interest in them.
"One day I was walking on Mount Roland and I came across a flash drive hanging in a tree," he said.
"I took it home and plugged it in to see if I could find out who it belonged to."
The drive, which was later returned to its owner, contained hundreds of photos of Tasmanian wilderness and huts, and "more importantly", Mr Baldock explained, it included a series of ABC radio interviews.
The series, Mountain Stories, aired across Tasmania in the 1990s and focused on the characters of the state's Central Highlands.
"A lot of those old guys were hunters and they built these rough, old snaring huts in the high country to support their enterprise," Mr Baldock said.
"So my brother and I, we set about visiting a lot of these areas. As I visited them and became familiar with them, I … decided to build the miniatures."
Lockdown triggers project start
Despite having the will to build the model huts, it wasn't until Tasmania's state-wide COVID lockdown that Mr Baldock found the time to make real progress on them.
The first miniature hut Mr Baldock built — the Reg Wadley Hut — was the most difficult one to construct, he said, because it involved "a lot of trial and error".
But by the time he had completed a few models, Mr Baldock decided to take on the challenge of building the relatively elaborate Borradaile Plains Hut as a present for his brother Noel on his 60th birthday.
However, that plan was soon scuttled after Mr Baldock realised his brother would turn 60 a year sooner than he had thought.
Plan B was to build Noel the much simpler Basil Steers Hut 1 miniature instead, which, once constructed, was well received.
"He loved it … it's one of his most-treasured possessions, I think," Mr Baldock said.
Keeping it rustic and real
In constructing a hut, Mr Baldock works off his memories as well as photographs and measurements he has taken in the field.
But the trick to making a good model hut, he said, was paying attention to detail.
Getting the detail of the huts' roofs right has proven to be one of the more labour-intensive aspects of the model-making.
Each roof is constructed with rusty iron with 2-millimetre corrugations, which Mr Baldock makes himself using a homemade die compressed under hydraulic pressure.
"Basically, what I do is I get rusty iron, bash it flat, cut it into strips, and reform it with [miniature] corrugations," he said.
Achieving a realistically weathered look on the model's fence posts also takes considerable time.
"I had to cut all my posts and let them sit out in the sun for about 18 months to grey off so I didn't have any fresh edges on them," Mr Baldock said.
Overall, Mr Baldock said making each model look "rough" was also key.
"You can't have anything too square, you can't have anything too straight," he said.
Mr Baldock said the practical skills he had acquired through his professional work were useful in constructing the huts.
"The trade background definitely helps when you're creating things, no doubt about that," he said.
Mini hut collection growing
Mr Baldock has made six miniature huts so far and he intends to make at least "a few" more.
"I visited the Lake Meston Hut about 12 months ago, and I measured that up … [so] I might have a crack at that one next," he said.
While the growing collection of huts has, to date, never been open to the public, photographs of some of the models have appeared on social media.
Mr Baldock said the huts received "a lot of admiration" in the form of complimentary comments.
If a suitable venue for the miniature hut collection can be found, Mr Baldock said he was open to putting it on display.
"Maybe sometime down the track, when my shed gets too small," he said.
