QLD Catherine McGregor
The spectacle of gruff men in suits hugging a fellow commuter in an airport lounge might raise the odd eyebrow. When that commuter is Catherine McGregor, the world's most senior transgender military officer, it is nothing short of profound. "I walked into the Qantas airport lounge in my female uniform and there was a bunch of guys there in suits ... and this group of men started applauding," recalls McGregor, outgoing group captain in the Royal Australian Air Force.
It was   February 2014 and the ABC's Australian Story had just aired McGregor's moving account of transitioning from Malcolm to Catherine. "[The men] were walking over and hugging me and touching me on the shoulder and saying 'Good on you love, fantastic,"' McGregor says. "Nothing had prepared me for that." 
The 59-year-old, who counts former prime minister Tony Abbott as a friend, says she has had "in many ways a very privileged transition".
But it has also exacted an emotional toll. And as a high-profile transgender woman, she has been the target of "hair-raising" vilification online.
"There is a lot of suffering in our community and if someone as high-profile and essentially privileged as I am in trans[gender] terms can just be torn to shreds and ridiculed and treated with disdain, god knows what's going on for [others]," McGregor says.
SA John Greenwood
Burns unit an innovation
The burns surgeon who is single-handedly responsible for patients from an area covering a third of the Australian mainland had not heard of Ash Wednesday when he took up his job. John Greenwood was headhunted from Manchester to attend to patients across notoriously bushfire-prone areas, including South Australia, the Northern Territory and western Victoria.
Patients were already blowing through the door when he arrived at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in   December 2001 and his colleagues were muttering about the prospect of another summer like the one that fanned the deadly Ash Wednesday fires of 1983. "I said, 'What do you mean by Ash Wednesday?'," said Dr Greenwood, who is South Australia's Australian of the Year for 2016.
Alarmed by the probability of a major fire breaking out within his catchment of 2.4 million square kilometres, Dr Greenwood quickly set up a mobile burns unit that could rapidly respond to a crisis.
Just 10 months later, the Bali bombings became its first major test. Along with a registrar and nurse, he attended to 45 patients during a 36-hour shift. The unit remains the only mobile burns assessment team in Australia.
Dr Greenwood next trained his sights on improving burns care worldwide. "I realised there were still a number of patients who had non-survivable injuries, and that broke my heart."
NSW Elizabeth Broderick
A champion of women
Elizabeth Broderick has stormed the boardrooms of Australia asking them to take gender equality seriously. She has pioneered part-time work in her own corporate career and spoken publicly of her personal experiences of sexual harassment, and aim as a working mother to be a "guilt-free zone". She has also advocated for paid parental leave (before a scheme existed) and for a greater focus on domestic violence (when it wasn't a mainstream issue).
But when her name was called out as the NSW Australian of the Year in   November, it was a total surprise to the former sex discrimination commissioner. "I could never have imagined at any time that I'd find myself in this place," Broderick says. "It's like, 'what?"'
She was nominated by 2015 Australian of the Year, Rosie Batty.
"I just think she's been a gift to Australia," Broderick says of Batty.
Broderick is heartened that her fellow nominees include David Morrison, who has been outspoken about respect for women in the military, and transgender community advocate Catherine McGregor.
"It shows that we've shifted as a nation, these issues [of diversity and inclusion] are coming more into the forefront of our thinking."
Broderick finished up at the Human Rights Commission last year, after eight years as Sex Discrimination Commissioner.