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Canberra Today 22°/26° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Call the Doctor!

ANYBODY with an incredibly accurate full-size replica of Doctor Who’s time machine in their front yard must be a die-hard worshipper of the cult series, right?

20130616_135404But electrician Sean O’Connor, who has a TARDIS in his front yard in Hall, insists he is not (for the uninitiated, the Doctor travels through time saving the universe in the TARDIS, which looks like a blue police call box from the outside, but is famously much larger on the inside thanks to alien technology).

“I’m actually not a massive Dr Who fan, but I did watch it growing up; it was probably the only thing on, having only two channels back then,” Sean tells us.

Looking for a lawn ornament, he says he wanted “something a bit left-field, something a bit bizarre”, instead of the usual stuff such as wagon wheels and old farm machinery.

“A good friend of mine is a bit of a sci-fi nut and a good carpenter, so we looked up the actual original plans for a police box from the UK and built it,” he explains. “It wasn’t a cheap exercise either, I can tell you.”

It’s attracted a lot of interest from fans, he says, as well as large groups of sightseers, police officers wanting to take a photo with it, and people from the UK who fondly remember when real police call boxes were a more common sight.

Since building it two months ago, Sean has learned that the real TARDIS used in the show has actually changed slightly over the decades, but his one is just like the original.

“To be honest, I’ve learnt more about Dr Who in the last six months than I’ve ever known in my life,” he says.

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Ian Meikle, editor

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