Before the sun creeps over the roof of Wagga Rural Referral Hospital, pastoral care volunteer Lynne Harmer is looking over her clipboard. Today she’ll talk to the big and the small, the strong and the weak, as they prepare to go into surgery. For some, it will be the end of a long journey, but for others, it’s frightening and new.

They say there are no atheists on the battlefield and the same is true for the operating theatre, Ms Harmer said.

“They can be frightened... big men come in with tattoos and muscles and they’re absolutely petrified,” she said. 

“They might wonder if they’ll die on the table, but I’ll talk to them, explain what will happen… humour goes a long way.

“Being a pastoral care worker we have to wait for them to broach the subject (of death), we’re not allowed to be forward, but we’ll talk to them about that too.”

At the nearby Yathong Lodge aged care facility, Lorna Robinson deals with those tough questions every day. With a large number of dementia patients, Ms Robinson needs to not only navigate questions of life and death, but also the isolation that comes on both sides of the debilitating illness.

“Everyone has an emotional and spiritual side that may not be touched upon until they’re sitting in a bed with nothing else to think about,” Ms Robinson said. 

“Thoughts of what happens after death come into their mind and they may not want to bother their family with those questions.

“Dementia can be very challenging, but I love the people and it’s nice to listen to their life stories, I think everyone deserves to be listened to.”

However, Lynne, Lorna and their pastoral care colleagues are just a few members of a virtual army of people dedicated to caring for people when they need it the most.

That care often starts far from the hospital, in the homes of the sick and dying. In order to free up ambulances to respond to critical incidents, a patient transport team takes up to 1000 people back and forth across the Riverina every week.

In Wagga alone, there are close to 70 patient transfers every day, co-ordinated by a team that helps make sure there’s always room for someone if they need it.

Gary Graf had been driving the patient transport vans for about 10 years and said it was a very rewarding job.

“There can be some pretty big unknowns with the patients, they might be frightened about what’s happening, and we’re not medical so we can’t discuss details with them but we can give support and encouragement,” Mr Graf said.

“But one of the most enjoyable parts of the job is when you take them back home again, they really start to glow and they’re happy to enjoy the ride, so we try to make it a pleasant experience for them.

“If someone falls asleep on the way home, well I take that as a compliment.”

Registered nurse Jennie Waters said she had done her hard years on the wards at the hospital, and really enjoyed the patient transport work.

“I think I’ve got the best job in the hospital,” Ms Waters said.

“I’ve had my time showering people and running wild up and down the wards, going home and wondering if I’d forgotten to do something, but now I get to do the one-on-one care with the patients.”

The patient transport team are like a big family, according to relative newcomer Ian McDougall, who had done the job for about a year. He said they trade stories when they run into each other, as well as notes on which country bakery does the best pies.

In another part of the hospital, volunteers were hard at work doing the sort of tedious work that would challenge even the most experienced surgeons. 

On one side of a large table in a small room, women were separating sheets of arm bands by hand, to make life easier for nurses when they’re admitting patients. At the other side of the table, they were tying the shoulders of fresh hospital gowns together and placing them in bags to save time in the busy emergency department.

Upstairs, the “lolly trolleys” were doing the rounds, handing out red frogs, newspapers and even just smiles and “hellos” to people on the wards.

The workers were all part of Brenda Shone’s team of volunteers, who treat every patient like they’re part of an extended family.

“I reckon I have the best team I could ever ask for,” Ms Shone said. 

“If we can make a person smile every day that’s it, that’s why I love my job.

“We all laugh and joke and get on together and if someone calls and asks us to do a job I think I’d be willing to do, then I’ll say yes.”

Besides doing all of the tedious, time-consuming tasks and cheering up patients, the volunteers provide another important resource for the hospital: fundraising.

Every cent earned by the lolly trolley goes into a bank account and when a ward needs new dressing trolleys or someone suggests a piece of equipment to help make life easier, there’s help at hand. 

“Before we opened the new hospital someone came to me and suggested we buy some motorised wheelchairs to help people with their long walk from the front entrance,” Ms Shone said. “This year we bought some dressing trolleys and a thing called a Sara Stedy to help people get strength back into their legs in rehab.”

Regardless of where they came from, what united all of these people was their dedication to the patients and their families. Whether taking people in for a procedure or holding a frightened hand, these unsung heroes provide a human touch when it’s needed the most.