Warialda’s beloved black and yellow replica of Star Wars droid R2D2 is back on his feet at the entrance to town, eight months after a violent storm tore his head clean off.
R2B2, a play on Warialda’s meaning of “place of wild honey”, was knocked apart in a storm on Wednesday, 26 November 2025. His creator, Warialda High School principal Shelly Way, has spent the months since piecing him back together, with help from the Warialda Men’s Shed.
“November 2025, November 26th, the storm happened. And it absolutely ripped through the town and poor R2 got decapitated,” Ms Way said.
Ms Way said the repair job had taken far longer than she would have liked, largely because of the demands of her full-time job. At one point, she considered scrapping the damaged statue altogether and starting fresh.
“I was going to throw him out, because I just knew I did not have the time to do that… But thanks to the Men’s Shed, that didn’t have to happen,” she said.
Weather exposure had also degraded the polystyrene beneath R2B2’s shell while he sat damaged, forcing Ms Way to scrape back weakened material and use spray foam to secure the repairs before repainting.
R2B2 was first installed on the Gwydir Highway entrance to Warialda, visible to motorists coming from Inverell, three-quarters of the way through 2022. Council poured a concrete slab for him at the site, and Ms Way and her husband installed him using a borrowed school ute.
The original build began during the town’s last severe drought. Ms Way said watching families leave the district pushed her to look for ways to draw visitors back to Warialda.
“When I first got to Warialda, it was in drought, and it was getting pretty bad at the time and heaps of people were leaving town,” she said. “I decided that I had to try to do something about that and maybe boost some tourism to the region.”
Early plans to build large flower sculptures out of polystyrene with students at Warialda High School stalled during COVID-19 restrictions and a school re-roofing project that displaced the space needed for sculpting. When a change of art teacher left a stockpile of polystyrene discs unused, Ms Way took the materials home to work on herself.
The discs, each 1.2 metres by 60 centimetres, needed a design that could be stacked with minimal sculpting.
“They sort of looked like a great big Panadol capsule and I thought to myself R2D2 is pretty cylindrical. Maybe I could make R2D2,” she said.
From there, the honey theme took over. “I came up with R2B2, and I thought that was absolutely hilarious at the time.”
Building R2B2 at home under a pergola tent, and later at the high school, took Ms Way 18 months, working from photographs alone with no three-dimensional reference to guide the proportions.
“I had to calculate every line that you see on R2 off a picture and then basically base it on ratios to make it work,” she said. She then coated the finished polystyrene form in cement render, a cheaper alternative to commercial weatherproofing products, a job that consumed most of a school holiday period.
Despite her mathematics background, Ms Way said the physical process of building R2B2 was overwhelming.
“I was absolutely terrified every time I went to carve him or build him or paint him or do anything, or cut into him,” she said. “Terrified I was going to stuff it up, terrified I was going to ruin the progress that I’d made so far.”
Ms Way has never sought recognition for the project, saying her focus is on what it can do for the town rather than her own profile.
“I never cared and I still don’t care that anybody knows that it’s me that has done any of this. It’s for the town,” she said. “I do it for the town.”
R2B2 also has company. With Ms Way and Warialda High School students installing a statue of Transformer Bumblebee in late 2024 with a post on Facebook from the Gravesend Public School celebrating the build, describing it as “a great friend for R2B2”.
More additions are planned. Ms Way is currently building Darth Verroader, a black and yellow take on Darth Vader posed in his signature Force choke, named after the varroa mite that has threatened honeybee populations in the district. She also wants to add two black and yellow Stormtroopers for photo opportunities, along with illuminated bee sculptures designed to appear to fly through town at night.
“I want to do Darth Vader. I want to do two Stormtroopers. I want to get the bees happening so that they light up at night and they’re really captivating for people who want to come and see at nighttime here,” she said.
Ms Way funds and builds the sculptures herself, in her own time, alongside her full-time role as principal. She has launched a donation drive to help cover materials, maintenance and future works, with a stated goal of directing funds toward town upgrades once running costs are covered.
Donations can be made through https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=YTGFG5EDKPGZJ
You can also follow Ms Way’s endeavours on YouTube via her channel One Person Can Save a Town.
The statues form part of a wider push to give Warialda drawcards for visitors, something Ms Way said mattered most in hard times for the district.
“It motivates me to contribute to my community,” she said.
R2B2’s return comes ahead of a bumper Warialda Honey Festival, which will move from its usual March slot to September this year to coincide with Warialda Public School’s 175th anniversary. The festival, the shire’s flagship annual event, will include local demonstrations and displays, live music, market stalls, face painting, bar facilities and an interactive circus play space.
“The world is a better place for creativity and to make things interesting,” she said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
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