On her first day, Anne Carey met a woman who had already lost six children to the Ebola virus and was about to lose her last.
The nurse had travelled to Sierra Leone in   December 2014, the year an Ebola outbreak was declared across West Africa. Hundreds were travelling to the Kenema treatment centre from all over the country and often arrived too late to be helped. 
Though some patients survived, many others died within a week. "We had hundreds of people but no place to put them," she said.
A large part of Ms Carey's job at the treatment centre was to provide pain relief to Ebola patients in their final stages. "We'd try and keep them comfortable and take away their fear - touch them, talk to them through the mask, try to be with them and offer comfort in that way," she said.
Ms Carey had always wanted to work overseas and had her heart set on Africa soon after she left school at 14. She went on to work as a nurse in Papua New Guinea and Sudan, and decided to go to Sierra Leone because of the slow international response to the crisis.
"Ebola wasn't an African problem, it was a world problem and therefore it was our problem in Australia," she said. "I wasn't necessarily fearful, but when I left Australia, I didn't think I'd come back. I saw Ebola as a bully and we have to stand up to bullies."
If named Australian of the Year on Wednesday, Ms Carey hopes to use her profile to "ask Australians to take on two other major bullies: workplace bullying, because we spend so much time at work and it often goes unnoticed, and the fear and racism [associated with] refugees.
"You don't have to go to Africa to help people," she said.