The objects that helped shape great Australians By Alexandra Back Toy soldiers made of reclaimed shrapnel from a World War I battlefield, a marker pen, binoculars, a cricket bat, a family photograph, a skin "cassette" and a painting by a death-row prisoner. 
These are objects that - in both small ways and big ways - helped shape the people who are now shaping Australia, on display in a new exhibition at the National Museum of Australia.
Australian of the Year awards finalists from each state have contributed to the exhibition one or two items with which they have a deep personal connection.
The miniature soldiers belong to ACT finalist, former chief of army and equality advocate David Morrison, and were a gift from Michael Bryce, husband of former governor-general Quentin Bryce.
"They said a great deal to me then, and they say a great deal to me now," Lieutenant-General Morrison said.
"Encapsulated in those two little figurines is the stories of millions of our fellow Australians who have put service before self in the nation's name."
Catherine McGregor, Queensland's Australian of the Year for her leadership as a transgender advocate, chose a cricket bat and an air force "baggy blue" as her personal objects. The bat was a gift from her late father just before he died; the cap, a nod to her playing career.
"He was obsessed that he would outfit me before he died," she said.
"He got me an adult bat that I grew into. I kept it; it's the only object that I've retained from my childhood.
"I was a pretty fragile kid ... batting was the one place where I kind of went somewhere else."
Western Australia's Anne Carey contributed the hat she wore while battling Ebola as a Red Cross aid worker in Sierra Leone.
She added a marker pen, which the nurses used to write names on their protective suits as a small reminder of the human underneath them.
South Australian burns surgeon Dr John Greenwood originally wanted to submit his electric guitar as a symbol of the band he gave up for medicine.
He settled on a skin "cassette" and foam dressing, which in the revolutionary treatment he developed are used to grow skin from a patient's own cells, removing the need for skin grafts.
National Museum curator Catriona Donnelly helped guide the contributors in their decisions.
"Just trying to find that object that really meant something," she said.
"Just an everyday hat is really in a different context when you consider how it was actually worn and what it means in a broader story."
The exhibition is being held in the foyer of the National Museum of Australia. It is free and open now until the end of   January2016.