Adventures up North : QMHE 2025
Over the weekend of August 16th & 17th 2025, the Queensland Model Hobbies Expo (QMHE) was held at the Ipswich Showgrounds in Ipswich, just west of Brisbane. We were once again invited up to the show, so I headed up to set up a demo display with the aim to show off our products to attendees of the show.
I headed up early on the Friday, catching a 11am flight from Melbourne to Brisbane. Whilst the flight itself was uneventful, we were delayed and left sitting on the runway for half an hour.
Then arriving in Brisbane, luggage was delayed and then I had issues getting a hold of the car hire place to collect the hire car. With that sorted, I then drove the hour or so out to Ipswich to where the event was, but due to all the delays, peak hour and roadworks on the highway threw on last spanner in the works, adding a further half an hour delay. So, by the time I checked into my hotel and got to the event, it was 4:30pm - only 2 hours later that I had planned!
As I was only doing demos, I didn't have a lot to set up, so I quickly got unpacked and set up our table. With that done, I entered some models I brought with me and then caught up with a heap of friends including Andrew from Hobbies Australia, Tony from Model Nerds, Eric from Manscale Models, Rob & Sam from Star Hobbies, Bruce from Drake Collectibles and John & Jesse from DDA. Then it was time to go lie down and get some rest before the first day of the show kicked off.
Saturday rolled around and after a quick bite to eat for breakfast, I headed over to the venue to put the final touches on the table and then get set up for the demos. Unfortunately, the compressor I was borrowing wasn't working correctly, so Chris from QMHE ducked out to grab a new one. This delayed my first session that I had planned for 10am, so couldn't get started until the next one at 12 noon.
This session went really well, with around 20 or so people coming to watch over the course of the 1 hour that the session ended up going for. I covered the basics of airbrushing with SMS Paints, working with White over Black, how to use Colour Shifts and Pearls and how best to apply HyperChrome to get the best and most realistic Chrome finish with minimal effort.
I had planned a third session at 2pm, but by this point, the venue was very quiet, so I ended up spending time doing a few one-on-one lessons with people who came past to check out the table.
Sunday was very similar to Saturday in terms of people in the venue, but as I was needing to leave early afternoon, I didn't have any dedicated sessions planned for the day. I spent some time again doing one-on-one lessons, and also did a special lesson with Jesse from Oz Wheels / DDA on how to airbrush our paints as a beginner and how to give 1/64 diecast cars a custom paint job. I ran through with Jesse on how to do it step by step and then threw him into the deep end by putting the airbrush in his hand and getting him to paint an Oz Wheels HJ Panel Van.
Our brand was represented strongly with three retailers, Star Hobbies, Drake Collectibles and Manscale Models, stocking a wide selection of our range.
Out of the 4 models I entered, I managed to win Gold in Mecha for my Zaku II, and a Bronze in Miscellaneous for my Spinosaurus Bust. The two cars I entered (A9X and LJ Toranas) didn't place unfortunately.
With an early flight home booked, I packed up and got out of the venue by around 2:30pm and then headed into Brisbane to drop off the car and get to the airport. I was then greeted with another flight delay, then 3 subsequent gate changes, all after navigating the long lines for baggage drop and then construction areas to get through screening at Brisbane Airport.
And as one final hurdle, we got into Melbourne late, then had to wait a further half an hour to get my bags only to miss the shuttle bus to the airport parking by seconds. I caught the next bus out, picked up my car, then drove a further 1.5 hours home to arrive in my driveway at 11:59pm.
I crawled into bed then next thing I knew, the alarm was going off at 5:30am on Monday morning for a fresh start to a new work week.
All up, it was a great weekend catching up with friends, retailers, and meeting heaps of new people whom I got to introduce to the SMS range. Hopefully our trip up was beneficial for everyone and seeing our paints in action gives even more confidence in the power of SMS Paints.
Here's a few models that caught my eye at the show :
Our next shows that we are trading at are the Diecast Expo in Caroline Springs in Melbourne in September, followed by SA Model Expo (Adelaide) in October, and rounding off the year with ScaleACT (Canberra) in November. Hope to see you there!
Keep on Modelling!
-Scott