Daily Photo: Brisbane’s Nepalese Peace Pagoda

In Brisbane I came across this Nepalese Peace Pagoda, something I really wasn’t expecting. What’s more, it’s quite impressive when you consider that it was practically built by an entire village, without a single nail!

Just getting the timber there was quite an undertaking. The 80 tonnes of wood came from the Terai forests in southern Nepal and had to be transported across the country’s mountainous terrain to Kathmandu, where the artisans could get to work. When construction began, the pagoda was built using traditional timber construction techniques, with no nails involved. Instead, the wooden components were carefully shaped and fitted together using traditional woodworking methods. More than 160 Nepalese artisans and their families spent two years constructing the pagoda, contributing over a million hours of labour to the project.

That’s quite a family DIY project!