This time, the shipping containers are the exhibition.

Appearing overnight outside the visitor’s centre on Tarcutta Street, the exhibition will be opened officially on February 6, and is intended to celebrate the history of the humble shipment.

It is the first outdoor exhibition the museum has ever hosted.

“It’s not something here before,” said the museum manager Luke Grealy.

“Certainly, it’s the first outside travelling exhibition we’ve had.”

Arriving from Wollongong late last week, Wagga is only the second city to showcase the exhibition as it continues across the country.

“We’re the second cab off the rank so to speak,” said Mr Grealy.

“It’s a big deal being the second city to show off this national exhibition.”

Remaining on display in Wagga until May, the six brightly coloured containers will move on to Narrabri next.

The containers were built to travel, but setting up the exhibition still proved a logistic difficulty. 

“It took three semi-trailers to get them here, and then we had to get the guys from Riverina Cranes to put them into place,” said Mr Grealy.

“Because it’s outdoors, we had to submit a development application for it, so it was a bit of work to get it all together.”

Each of the six brightly coloured boxes contains a thematic scene inside.

The first explores how the world moved its wears before it had been invented. Another explores the movement of containers by water, and the ocean impact that can have.

“There’s the obvious effect from things like ship spills. The container actually goes through some of the stranger things that have washed to shore after a container spill,” said Mr Grealy.

“Then there’s the less obvious ocean impacts like how ship sonars can interfere with whale calls.”

Mr Grealy’s personal highlight is the green container, which contains a scene from any Australian home.

“There’s all these typical Australian items and objects, and it talks about how far they’ve travelled to get here,” he said.

“That’s the one you can look at and then go home, look around your house and know how far things have travelled to get to you.”

Internal elements that requiring a source of power are individually generated through the solar panels attached to the roof of each container.

Visible from the road, the containers have already generated interest, even before opening.

“One of the attractions to them is that they’re eye catching in their fluorescent colours,” said Mr Grealy.

“Each morning we’ve been out here, people walking or jogging by have stopped to asked us about it, they’re very curious.”