Garth O’Connell

Born on Gadigal country into a Gomeroi (Kamilaroi) family, grew up on Eora and Darug country. Living on Ngunnawal country for the past 20+ years. I completed Year 12 at a high school in South West Sydney before graduating from University with a degree in Cultural Heritage Management.  I’ve also served in the Australian Army as an Infantryman for many years, including service overseas on multiple occasions.  I’m one of several Defence Force veterans here on staff at the Memorial.

My role is very diverse as it includes working with collections, assisting with exhibitions, educating the public, assisting our families and veterans, sourcing relevant items for the collection and going on overseas deployments to collect items. As an objects curator I am a custodian of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander material culture collection and I’m a subject matter expert on a range of subjects including Indigenous Australian Prisoners of War, Aboriginal aircrew of the Second World War and the Fall of Singapore in 1942.

I enjoy working at the Memorial because I have items from several family and friends ‘in the collection’ and on display in our galleries so I never feel alone here.  Assisting our many visitors, families and veterans in their visits and enquiries about the ongoing history of Australian servicemen and women.

We need more people from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community to work here, there are many career options and not all require a strong knowledge of military history.  If you do that will help in some specialist curatorial teams but in some of our corporate and other teams it is not a high priority.