22-foot-tall hockey player sculpture installed outside Prudential Center By Katherine Santiago/The Star-Ledger August 17, 2009, 7:50PM Amanda Brown/The Star-Ledger Anthony Serrao, left, a fabricator, consults with sculptor, Jon Krawczyk, as they prep his new sculpture of a hockey player hitting a slap shot. NEWARK -- Jon Krawczyk braved the heat today to witness his creation -- a nearly three-story stainless steel hockey player -- rise outside The Rock, the home of the New Jersey Devils. "When you mess with the Devil, I guess you have to get in the kitchen," the sculptor said as temperatures reached well into the 90s in Newark. "It was cooking." The sculpture, weighing 6,000 pounds, was put upright during often tense moments with the aid of ropes on the plaza outside the Prudential Center arena at Edison Place and Mulberry Street. "It's like skating on the patio," he said shortly before 6 p.m., more than 9 hours after he delivered the towering man of steel. The journey is one Krawczyk won't soon forget. Last year, Krawczyk personally took the wheel of a truck to lead the expressionistic sculpture on a four-day cross-country trek from his Malibu, Calif., studio to his boyhood home in Boonton Township. There, it waited a year under his mother's watchful eyes for today's perspiration-filled assembly, more than a month ahead of an "official" Sept. 29 unveiling at a Devils pre-season game. The tall hockey player that some call "The Iron Man" is just the latest creation by the 39-year-old Krawczyk, whose handiwork has showed up at Texas A&M's art building and the Four Seasons Hotel in Hollywood, Fla. Amanda Brown/The Star-Ledger Sculptor Jon Krawczyk preps his new sculpture of a hockey player hitting a slap shots before it is moved into place. The 22-foot tall sculpture will be located in the new Championship Plaza next to the Prudential Center in downtown Newark. To pull this one off, the longtime Devils fan actually got in touch with Michael Gilfillan, one of the owners of the Devils and a former classmate at Delbarton in Morristown, and successfully pitched the idea. "I wanted to meld those things together -- to do a sports sculpture that could be appreciated as art," he said last year. It took eight months to complete. The road-trip was uneventful -- that is until Sunday night. It turns out someone stole the truck trailer's lights and brake lines during its layover, he said. "I didn't realize that until last night," he said today. "I figure it must have been a Ranger fan."

The Australian National Maritime Museum has thousands of exhibits depicting Australia's history - from ancient times when Aboriginal people trapped fish and traded with Asian neighbours, right up to the present. Visitors can see what life was like on the convict ships; how Australia "rode on the whale's back"; how its first submarine fought bravely (and lost) in World World I at Gallipoli; what people packed when they sailed to a new life on these shores; why surfboards have become shorter; and more. There are displays, hands-on exhibits, a cinema and the latest museum computer games. Guided tours at no cost. Visitors can go aboard the HMAS Vampire, the former Royal Australian Navy destroyer. A guided tour shows how the crew lived, worked and relaxed. Also on display is Australia II, winner of the 1983 America's Cup; relics of Captain Cook's Endeavour; the famous World War II commando boat Krait; a sleek racing cutter of 1888; a Vietnamese refugee boat that made the hazardous sea voyage to Australia and a pearling lugger from Broome, a far north-western seabord town which is now a booming tourist destination.