VIRGINIA EDWARDS, AM
Animal advocate
After 50 years of volunteer work for Lort Smith Animal Hospital in Melbourne, Virginia Edwards has come to realise the nationally renowned institution is as much about helping people as animals. She says its prime role might be providing vet care to the needy, "but caring for the animals makes the owners happy and their quality of life improves, as well as the animals'. It's a two-way street." 
In the mid-1980s she helped pioneer the use of animals as therapy animals for people in schools and hospitals. Mrs Edwards served on the Lort Smith board for 35 years, until last year. She was a prolific fund-raiser and volunteer.
Much of her work is informal: she enjoys talking about the hospital to strangers in shops and trams. She once befriended a man walking his dogs and when he died, he left $10,000 to the hospital.
Mrs Edwards said she was "totally and utterly overwhelmed" to be honoured.