If there has been one constant in Cate McGregor's life, it's cricket.
So it's little surprise the only item she's kept from her childhood is a bat.
It was a gift from her father, which she unwrapped as an eight-year-old boy on Christmas morning - just days after he died from melanoma.
"I'd shown some talent as a young cricketer, and he was obsessed with it," a tearful Lieutenant Colonel McGregor said on Wednesday.
"I was a pretty fragile kid ... and batting was the one place where I kind of went somewhere else."
The Royal Australian Air Force group captain relished the solitude of standing at the crease, eyes and mind on the bowler, even though it made her "one of the most boring people to ever play cricket".
Her bat is part of an exhibition at the National Museum of Australia featuring personal objects from the 2016 Australian of the Year finalists.
It sits alongside her `baggy blue' cap, given to her on debut for the RAAF women's cricket team earlier this year.
"If you told me that I'd be still playing competitive cricket at the age of 59 in my affirmed gender amongst a team of very welcoming women cricketers I'd have thought you were stark-raving bonkers," she said.
Four years ago she was sitting watching India play the Chairmen's XI at nearby Manuka Oval as a male.
Long-time friend and former Chief of Army David Morrison, the ACT Australian of the Year, chose two miniature Australian soldiers made from shrapnel recovered from the battlefields of WWI.
Also on display is a portrait of Indonesian President Joko Widodo, painted by Myuran Sukumaran while in Bali's Kerobokan Prison.
The canvas belongs to Australian lawyer and Victorian finalist Julian McMahon, who represented Sukumaran and Andrew Chan before their execution on drug charges in Indonesia in April.
Among the other items are a sunhat worn by West Australian nurse Anne Carey - when not in a space suit - while fighting the "big bully" of Ebola in Sierra Leone, and a unique foam dressing and equipment used to culture a patient's skin by South Australian burns surgeon John Greenwood.
A photograph of NSW finalist and former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick and her twin sister, together with a metal charm belonging to their mother is also on display.
The Australian of the Year recipients will be announced in Canberra on January 25.
