Parade carries mark of model professional

Ivan Lindsey says it took him up to 3000 hours to complete his six metre long Trooping the Colour parade diorama. Picture / Alan Gibson

Ivan Lindsey has no room for the car in his double garage, which has been turned into a "mini military museum".

So crowded is the building with fascinating memorabilia and Army, Navy and Air Force scale models that the Tauranga 69-year-old has put the centrepiece up for sale.

Measuring 6m long by 1m wide, it is a detailed diorama of the parade back to Buckingham Palace following the annual Trooping the Colour in 1986. Included are 1080 figurines, most of which Mr Lindsey made himself.

The project took 17 years to complete with guidance from photographs and videos his son Neil took at the time. The representation doesn't even cover the full length of the parade that year. To do the lot, Mr Lindsey says, would have needed another 4m of space.

"We've got to make room," he says with resignation. But not for the car. A great lover of the military and its traditional ceremony, he now wants to build a 1:96 scale model of the British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious.

"I've had my fun with it [the diorama, which he finished three years ago]. I don't get sentimental. Ideally I want it to go to a museum where thousands of people will see it."

The former builder, salesman and food industry manager won't say how much he hopes the diorama will fetch but reveals "you couldn't replace it under $20,000-plus".

The display took up to 3000 hours to build. "It was a big learning curve."

Mr Lindsey says the Trooping the Colour ceremony has often been a subject for model makers but he wanted to replicate the participants after they had left the Horse Guards Parade area onto The Mall.

They included the Lifeguards, the Blues and Royals, the combined bands of the Household Division, and the royal party. The Queen, who these days travels by coach in the parade, is on horseback.

As a boy in Hamilton, Mr Lindsey absorbed war-time military activity and later did his compulsory military training in the Army.

When he and wife Lorna retired to Tauranga from Auckland's North Shore they sought a property suitable for their varied collection of treasures - and especially the diorama.

His garage, he says, is a "living museum" and people come from far and wide for private viewings.

Two heart attacks and a stroke have not downed this enthusiast. So why bother to build a model as ambitious as the parade?

"Why wouldn't one?" he replies.