Australian War Memorial Digitisation project – Seeking further information

The Australian War Memorial is digitising items from the National Collection, preserving records of wartime experiences and creating a comprehensive digital archive of Australian servicemen, servicewomen, nurses, and civilians, their deeds, and the wider Australian experience of war, making them available for research and study via the Memorial’s website.

As part of this project the Memorial is seeking contact with relatives of the persons listed below. If are you related to these people, or in contact with their descendants, the Memorial would love to talk to you. Please contact Digitised Collections: Digitised.Collections@awm.gov.au

Sir John Angus Nimmo CBE QC

Sir John Angus Nimmo was born at Ballarat on 15 January 1909 to John James and Grace (neé Mann) Nimmo. He was the eldest of four brothers, and moved to Melbourne with his family when he was ten years old. He studied law at Melbourne University, and practiced as a barrister. John married Teanie Rose Galloway in 1935, and they had one son. During the Second World War, Nimmo volunteered as a field force officer and representative for the Australian Red Cross. In his role as a representative, he travelled to Belsen concentration camp with the purpose of learning about appropriate diet and treatment methods for starving and malnourished prisoners of war.

After the war, Nimmo returned to law practice and continued to live in Melbourne. He held many significant positions, including Justice of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory (1969–1974) and Chief Justice of Fiji (1972–1974). He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1972. By 1980, Sir John Angus Nimmo had retired and was living at Mount Eliza, Victoria. He died on 7 July 1997.

Nimmo delivered a paper titled “I was at Belsen” to the Wesley Church at Melbourne on 2 October 1945. He donated this paper to the Australian War Memorial, and it can now be found in Private Record 3DRL/3958. Further information on this collection can be found here: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C89720