Driving the streets of Bendigo in the last two years, you may have seen Hugh Murdoch's impressive maritime structure rise from the ground in front of his Hargreaves Street unit.
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The boat, an ode to his late wife, is now completed.
"It came about because Pauline was terminally ill," he said.
"The two of us agreed that once she had gone, the best thing for me to do would be to go and live on the boat.
"So while I looked after her, for the last few years, I have been building this."
Mr Murdoch's wife of 43 years, passed away in February.
He said the boat helped provide closure after her death.
"I was progressing steadily along but now I am ramping up the pace a bit that I don't have to look after her," he said.
He has started preparing to join his brother and sisters in Tasmania.
Mr Murdoch said "to date, I have spent a total of 3200 hours of work on the whole project."
"It's a continuous process of interest because no one expects to see something like that in Bendigo," he said.
"(People donated) a whole lot of rigging gear, one fellow gave me a compass and I got an anchor and bits and pieces from various people. It was really good.
"It was really touching that people would contribute to that, I suppose."
The 35-foot boat was named The Dawn Treader after C.S. Lewis' Narnia novels.
The boat is easily recognisable in Hargreaves Street with traffic and passers-by often stopping to have a look.
"I get a lot of people stopping and it's slows down a lot of traffic in Hargreaves Street," he said.
"But I get a lot of joy and satisfaction out of building and being self sufficient."
Mr Murdoch said he needed to have the project finished by the time his house's lease expired in August 2015.
"I'm not that far away from realising the dream," he said.
"The dream is to live on the boat."
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