When it comes to gift giving, even Santa might have a hard time topping what Peter Kleeman got from his dad for his fourth birthday.
The Space Age Museum. Photo: Supplied
It was a handmade 2.4-meter-long X-Wing Fighter inspired by Luke Skywalker.
That Rebel Alliance Starfighter launched what would become a family obsession, collecting and preserving space age artefacts.
From Buck Rogers toy guns to flying saucers, their collection is in a 100-year-old barn in a secret location.
He explains to Jesse Mulligan what you are looking at in the first picture.
“So that’s a view of one corner of our barn where we store the larger items of our collection.
“That plane in the back is a test plane from the 1940s, it was actually the first plane to break Mach II, go twice the speed of sound, and that’s the Douglas Sky Rocket, so it’s one of the first rocket planes.
A hand crafted X Wing Peter Kleeman, founder of the Space Age Museum, was gifted by his father. Photo: Supplied / Peter Kleeman
“There’s a few of them made and one of them is in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and this one was a test model, it didn’t actually fly but it was used for preparing the plane before it actually did its historic flight.
A Space Age Museum toy. Photo: Supplied / Peter Kleeman
“Then in front of it you can see some of the folk-art robots we’ve collected, up under the nose of the plane there’s a large boxy silver robot and that’s the first life sized robot we got.
“When we acquired that I was about waist high on that guy and now as an adult I can see eye to eye with him. I was an only child so these were kind of my friends growing up, we included them in some of our holiday cards, which always had a space theme over the years.
A Space Age rocket on show. Photo: Supplied / Peter Kleeman
“We just love this stuff so we started packing it away in this old barn and slowly it became more of a museum.”
By his last estimate, Kleeman has collected more than 10,000 artefacts and 8,000 photographs for his museum, though he believes he's due another audit some time soon.
He says the criteria for what objects make his museum has evolved over the years of collecting he has done.
“Some of the things I mentioned were commercially made toys, really iconic design items from popular culture, but we’ve drawn more towards unusual items, one of a kind folk art pieces.
Luer Rocket on its way to the Space Age Museum. Photo: Supplied / Peter Kleeman
“It can be furniture, it could be advertising, it could be a toy, but we look for things that show everyday people participating in space exploration and visions of the future.”
A flying saucer - part of the Space Age Museum. Photo: Supplied / Peter Kleeman
Kleeman says he is always on the look out for new items from all over the world and you can get in contact with him via his website if you think something may be of interest.
Columbia Memorial - part of the Space Age museum. Photo: Supplied / Peter Kleeman
You can listen to more of Kleeman’s interview on Space Age artefacts, his handcrafted X-wing, what defines ‘Space Age’, his love of Carl Sagan and the rush he gets when he discovers a new object for his collection here.
