‘Don’t get rid of your old Lego!’: Ryan ‘The Brickman’ McNaught’s unlikely rise to fame

Lego Masters co-host Ryan ‘The Brickman’ McNaught, whose exhibition Jurassic World is open at the Australian Museum. Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian

When I first met Ryan “The Brickman” McNaught a decade ago, I had my two bug-eyed sons (seven and five) in tow. He was – and remains – the only Lego-certified professional in the southern hemisphere, and they were Lego-crazy back then. It was their first glimpse of what was at the time McNaught’s most complex commission: an intricate cross-sectioned model of the Roman Colosseum, rendered in more than 200,000 Lego blocks and installed in the University of Sydney’s Nicholson Museum.

A year later, we met again, this time in his immaculately organised garage in Pascoe Vale South in Melbourne, not far from Essendon Football Club’s Windy Hill.