Thanks for the feedback everyone. Since I was on Saturday a new display has opened. The ANZ New Zealand room contains a large scale diorama of the battlefield at Chunuk Bair featuring an army of over 5000 miniatures. It depicts that battle in the Gallipoli campaign where, on 8 August 1915, the Wellington Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Malone took and defended the Turkish defences on the heights of the ridge line overlooking the Gallipoli beach head. The diorama shows the desperate fighting, bravery and leadership on both sides that characterised this crucial battle.
Have a look here:
http://anzacdiorama.blogspot.co.nz/Blog author writes:
"Having seen the diorama in its last stages of development, I can say the wait will be worth it. It is absolutely stunning. And I mean not just 'stunning' in the way it looks with so many lovingly painted 54mm figures on such a large terrain, but actually 'stunning' by its heart-rending impact on the spectator with the huge amount of carnage it shows.
This is no normal sanitised wargames table - it is a 'no holds barred' freeze-frame of the bloody squalor that the real battlefield would have been on that day.
Painting the figures, especially the casualties, has been a very emotional task. Perhaps this is part of the reason that the project has built up an incredible atmosphere amongst the 140 volunteer painters involved.
The painting project has brought together wargamers from different clubs all over the country, as well as lots of non-club wargamers and painters. It has brought together gamers of every genre, most of whom had never painted WW1 or 54mm before. It has resulted in a camaraderie between the volunteer painters and the professional model-makers from Weta Workshop who did the terrain.
And through the loads of media interest the painting project has created, it has brought the hobby out into the public arena in a definitely "non-geeky" way.
Overall, it has made us all feel proud that we have really done something special to commemorate this important event in New Zealand's history."
Sir Peter Jackson reviews the troops, accompanied by Rhys Jones (aka 'Armchair General', which is a nickname he is fully entitled to, being a retired Lieutenant General in real life), and UK sculptors extraordinaire, Michael and Alan Perry.
The real terrain around Chunuk Bair was mapped by laser surveying, and the digital map was then used to guide the computer controlled lathe to shape large blocks of styrofoam to form the miniature terrain.
Even though it looks like a picnic, applying the vegetation to the terrain was a huge job, and took about two weeks.
