St Peter's students Shai Cuthbert and Maddie Jones received the sculpture prize for their school after they won Sculpture for Clyde student awards in August.

Shai won the overall student award for her sculpture, "Wings", and Maddie was awarded highly commended for "An Unlikely Treat".

Mr Dimmer said he wanted "Dalek Variation" to be inspirational to the kids who saw it.

All materials were recycled: old farm machinery, a bed, garden tools; even bits of red pipe and blue paint.

"Everything really has been saved from landfill," he said.

He hoped students might be inspired to pursue hand skills instead of pure academia.

"I've had academic friends that haven't got a bloody clue about anything else; they're hopeless," he laughed.

"Hand skills can help you later in life."

And the Doctor Who connection?: He simply looked at it and thought, "gee, that reminds me of a Dalek".

Mr Dimmer, who judged the student category, said the calibre of Eurobodalla Shire students submitting sculptures was very high.

He said he could have chosen five or six sculptures, they were all within a few points of each other.

"This is a cliche - the judges often say 'you gave us a hard job' - but they did," he said.

"I made myself a set of criteria: five different (classes). And they were awarded points out of 10, for each class, for each sculpture.

"The reason I chose Shai's was, as soon as I saw it, it evoked an emotion in me.

"Even though it was only made out of plastic spoons, it evoked this feeling.

"It was called Wings - but to me, it evoked an angel. It just had this fantastic thing about it."

Shai said this was the first time she had created an abstract sculpture, and she was very shocked when she found out she had won.

The year 9 student used nearly 300 plastic spoons, chicken wire and hot glue to produce the work 40 cm high by 20 cm wide over five weeks.

She found art "very calming" and wanted to create more in the future, despite accidentally burning fingers with hot glue guns in the process, she said.

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