The race to be the most striking object in a new exhibition of objects dear to the eight 2017 Australian of the Year finalists has been won, literally, by a nose.
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Queensland's Australian of the Year Emeritus Professor Alan Mackay-Sim has leant the National Museum of Australia a gigantic fibreglass nose that for 20 years has decorated his office wall.
The professor is one of the eight 2017 Australian of the Year finalists to donate personal objects of profound significance for them to an exhibition that opened at the National Museum on Thursday. Six of the eight Australians of the Year were at Thursday's opening ceremony and launch of an exhibition jointly organised by the National Museum of Australia and National Australia Day Council (NADC).
Alan Tongue the 2017 ACT Australian of the Year, a rugby league star turned youth mentor and educator spoke movingly on Thursday of his donations. They include a gorgeously gilded and bronzed football boot (after the professor's nose the most eye-catching object of the display). Tongue received it as the 2008 Rugby League Players Association Education and Welfare Player of the Year.
The glamorous boot shares its display case with Tongue's two other donations. They are a white ribbon reflecting his continuing campaign of education against domestic violence, and a tiny wooden crucifix testifying to his Christian faith.
On Thursday and for The Canberra Times Dr Mackay-Sim obligingly posed beside his awesome nose. He has been chosen as Queensland's Australian of the Year (on Thursday he said humbly that his nomination had at first caused him "shock, and horror" as he wondered whether he was deserving enough) for his research into how nasal stem cells may be used to treat spinal cord injuries.
"I found the original nose, this huge, striking nose, when I was staying in China in 1987. It was my souvenir from China. It was made of plaster. I think it was used as an artists' model.
"We subsequently made this [replica] from it and it's been hanging on my wall in my office ever since. It just represents almost my whole research. I've been really interested in many aspects of humans' sense of smell and of how it changes ... and then in how we can use [that knowledge] for clinical purposes. The sensory nerves of the nose are continually regenerating from stem cells in the nose ... and we can take those cells out and grow them in a dish and put them back into spinal cords."
His research is giving hope to thousands suffering spinal cord injuries.
The other Australians of the Year present on Thursday were South Australia's Kate Swaffer, Victoria's Paris Aristotle the torture and trauma rehabilitation advocate, and Northern Territory indigenous leader and businesswoman Andrea Mason.
Kate Swaffer, an advocate for living fulfillingly beyond diagnoses of dementia, has contributed to the exhibition a finely-made, graceful wooden seagull. She discovered it at a time when she was grieving, and found that it helped her. It was inspired by the much-beloved book Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which advocates soaring like a seabird to follow your own path to truth and freedom.
