He'd already delivered a master class to a small cohort of students on the inner workings of computers, and re-built seven functioning school laptops from 20 old and broken ones.

So when he saw Nakara Primary School had built a wall computer - a computer with all the inside components exposed on a wall or a board - and saw how it functioned, he knew he could do better.

What proceeded was a year of unimaginable challenges, even for the young tech whiz, who spends the majority of his time delved deep into tiny wires and hardware.

"It's basically like Lego once you simplify it," he said.

The School of the Air student had been taking on a bulk of technology odd-jobs every Thursday at Katherine South Primary for two years as the IT Assistant.

And with the help of his teacher Candice McCombes, and the school's Information, Communication, Technology coordinator, Steven Highet, pulled together the funds to bring the idea to life.

"We faced a lot of difficulties as the months went on," Hamish said.

"At the beginning it would do all sorts of strange behaviors like showing RAM issues, and then sometimes you could plug it in and it would turn itself on, but not turn off.

"It was a process of elimination, but we ended up having to change the motherboard, the power supply and we grounded everything on a metal backboard."

Interested in the mechanics rather than the software, Hamish said he fell into the passion when he ran out of things to watch on YouTube.

"I started watching tech stuff in the end, and I was really interested in how it all worked," he said.

"The intrigue is seeing how it operates and getting in and troubleshooting."

While building the wall computer, it was the string of errors which had to be untangled that kept him motivated to get it exactly right.

Yesterday, finally, Hamish launched the finished product at a small school ceremony.

Stuck tightly to a stand, it will be easy to move from classroom to classroom to provide a visual cue for students in their STEM classes.

But that's not the end of his foray into the most expensive adult form of Lego, next he wants to investigate water cooling computers, which uses a type of radiator instead of a fan.

The benefit?

"Water has a larger thermal mass to keep things better cooled, it is also quieter," he said.

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