A control panel drawn using my favourite 4-colour ballpoint pen.

This is a racing car which is being fixed. The wheels are off and the hydraulic lift underneath is for the mechanics (notice their toolbox). The car is fueled by kerosene. Mom added colour for me.

Tom drove this small excavator at my friends' farm. Yes, all by himself, following his Dad's instructions very carefully.

Tom's dad has a book with very detailed drawings of ships. Today Tom drew these while looking at this book. Note the broken arm from a playground accident: only one week later, the cast is already looking grubby.

A time machine is being constructed on a runway (Photoshopping by Becky). Bottom is the full view, with two close-ups above.

An experiment: what happens when you mix water (blue), lava (red), acid (green) and electricity? The ingredients in the experiment are recycled. The first three pictures are detail, and the final is the whole picture. Click on a picture to look at a bigger version.

This is a picture of a submarine. It can fly and drop bombs. It can also go underwater and shoot torpedoes. (The first two pictures are details, then the whole picture is at the bottom; if it's difficult to see any of the pictures, just click on them and a larger version will download.)

On Sunday I went on a helicopter ride. My friend Simon is a helicopter pilot on a rescue helicopter. He took us on a ride. It was lots and lots and lots of fun. We were in the air for 45 minutes. We travelled all over Canberra. We went over Canberra Airport. We almost touched the runway. Simon had to practice just looking at the dashboard instead of looking out of the screen, because on night missions they cannot see out of the screen. So they have to use the dashboard dials and buttons and levers and watch whether there's any problems on the problem scanner. And we did it, and it was very scary. We only went about 1 meter off the ground when we were practicing landing. We had to use special headphones to hear each other because the blades on the helicopter were very noisy. We could talk to each other by pushing a little button on a cord and then talking into our microphone. We had to turn our headphones to the highest that they go.

The bad guys are trying to take over the good guys' tower (which is their base). The helicopter is shooting lava at the good guy's tank (the one with camouflage). When the helicopter shot the good guys' tank, it made a big bump and the guy that was controlling the big cannon accidentally pushed the lever for the grenade to come out. And the grenade hit the escape ship. But luckily it didn't melt it because another good ship made the lava turn cold with icy cold ice water.

The tower has shot the helicopter because of what it has done to the tank. And now the helicopter is on fire.

This is my electric eel. I made it at the National Art Gallery. It is an electric eel because it has electricity going through it. I made it with one big electric cord that is connected to a powerpoint. The skeleton is an old piece of lamp wire from worklights. The brain is one of those green circuit boards. I cut the wire at the end to let small wires out. I connected the small wires to the circuit board brain to make it look like all the tubes and wires you would need in your head if you were a robot. And that's basically it.

(It can't work if you were wondering.)

This is my picture. It is like an oil rig because it stands on the sea floor. But what it actually does is it collects stuff with its crane, like old tyres that have been washed up from the beaches, and old pieces of boat wrecks. Then it builds it into other stuff. It is very useful if you believe that people shouldn't kill anything in the sea.

This is my cocoon. It was a giant caterpillar to start with. Now it is a giant cocoon. We or I don't know when it's going to hatch. If it's a boy, it's going to grow into a moth about 14 cm across. If it's a girl, it will be 16 cm across. The moth is called a white stemmed gum moth.

This is my rock collection. It has lots and lots of different stones in it. I like it a lot and it was only $24. My favourites are the lapis lazuli and the amethyst. Those two are from Deltora. Deltora is a series of books that Emily Rodda wrote. Lots of my friends are reading Deltora Quest and like it very much.

This is my picture. I brought it home from school. It is called "Volcano Land". I will describe the parts of the picture with numbers on it:

1. Baddy (translation: bad guys) trap door (baddy aircraft land here).

2. When the trapped aircraft falls, a turbine cuts it up and sorts the metal and fuel and other kinds of materials. It throws every material out except for the petrol. The petrol gets stored and they use it for the volcano.

3. Training troops (goodies ie good guys).

4. The petrol gets sucked up and gets put into the burners. The burners explode the petrol and make a huge fire. Then a machine gets rocks and puts them in the fire to melt them and make lava. The lava gets shot out by some powerful jets. Then it forms a volcano.

5. If you go in this special room, there's only one way to get out and it's a very dangerous way to get out. You have to climb through the burner place! Or, you will have to go deeper down into the earth.

6. The leader droid is looking out for any leaks in the lava box, and controlling the battle droids too.

7. This special suit is only worn in the lava box. It is lava-proof: even if you get shot out and go past space you will still be alive. It has twelve billion centuries of air in it.

8. This is where the lava comes out. If you are standing head first looking down into the hole, and then it erupts, you will die unless you are wearing one of the special suits.

9. The battle droids at the top are just playing around because they won the last battle. They only had 4 droids against 5,000,000,000 enemies. They won just like breaking a toothpick (really easily).

10. All of the smoke comes out here. If all the smoke remained in the lava box, the fire would go out and there would be no lava. So they decided to make an extra tube that sucked out all of the smoke and shot it out an extra hole.