Mat Trinca, 54, director of the National Museum of Australia: Q&A

National Museum of Australia director Mat Trinca on ambition, job skills and the influence of strong women.

Mat Trinca, museum director. Picture: Ray Strange

When you joined the National Museum of Australia in 2003, did you think you’d end up running the place? I can honestly say, never. For me, ambition hasn’t always been an animating force. I’ve done a job in the way I wanted to do it, and then done the next job. I’ve been incredibly fortunate.

Diplomat, spruiker, ideas person — which skill is most important for a museum director? All of them, but I’d say that without ideas, you’re nowhere — you’ve got to be excited by other people’s ideas and hopefully have a few of your own.

What is your favourite object in the museum? The Captive Barbarian, the wonderful statue on loan from the British Museum in our current exhibition Rome: City and Empire. I love the idea that here is a depiction of the conquered, not the conquering. From the permanent Australian collections, I love the Kimberley spear points made from glass and broken ceramic insulators from bush telegraph poles. They are an emblematic object for this country’s history, joining non-indigenous Australians to the first peoples’ long story.

Has Canberra overcome its reputation as a boring bush town full of public servants and complicated roundabouts? People are switching onto the fact that Canberra is not just an absorbing destination for culture and ideas, but actually the country’s pre-eminent one. There’s a host of cultural institutions with great collections, and great opportunities for people to learn about what it means to live in this country.

You grew up in WA and your father died when you were nine. How did that loss shape you? For any child who loses a parent at a relatively young age it has a very mordant, searching effect. It’s with you in some ways for the rest of your life. Still, I tend to be fairly positive about the experience I had growing up with four key figures in my life — my three sisters and my mother — all of whom were unreasonably good to me. It’s no surprise to me that I married Melinda Jamieson, a small businesswoman and former television director. Women of strength and purpose have had the biggest effect on me of anything in my life.

Your parents’ families were from the same Italian village, yet your mum and dad met on a farm outside Perth. Isn’t that a long way to go for a date? My father had come from northern Italy in the 1930s and my mother’s family had come from the same region; she was born here in the 1920s. My father was in Kalgoorlie gold mining and he must have heard about a family from his village, living in the hills outside Perth. He went up there. The family had this daughter, who was then about 20. The rest, as they say, is history.

Your five-year term as NMA director is up in February. Are you keen to extend? There’s a question! I feel there’s so much more to do here, the opportunity to continue to advance the museum in national life is something that continues to excite me. But the truth is, these decisions are for others to make.

How do you balance the job with raising primary school-aged kids? I can honestly say that I sometimes think, “My God! Where am I going to get the energy required to play football after the day I’ve had?’’ But you do. You have to find ways of making sure you understand the most important thing in your life is your family.

Rome: City and Empire is at the NMA in Canberra until February 3