ALISON Smith moved to Bendigo with little more than a pinpoint on a Reader's Digest map and the results of internet searches to tell her what life here was like.
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She had never even visited Australia before she and her family decided to emigrate from England.
From the moment her feet touched Australian soil, Mrs Smith thought, "Yeah, I'm home."
Australia welcomed her with flooding, and then with fires so close to home the family had to be evacuated.
Then a specialist palliative care nurse working a couple of days a fortnight in hospice, Mrs Smith said it was her colleagues that helped her make Bendigo home.
That included helping her in the literal face of fire.
Mrs Smith said she received a call from 'the girls' saying they had noticed there was a fire near the family's home, about a year after they moved in, and advising her on how best to respond.
"I could not have got through all these things without the girls from hospice," she said.
"Without the support of my colleagues I probably would have lost my sanity."
It's been a week for reflecting on the difference those working in health - particularly nurses - have made to the lives of many.
May 12 was International Nurses Day.
Support flowed from all over the world as people acknowledged the service of nurses, particularly those who had died trying to save people from COVID-19.
Mrs Smith said she had been asked a number of times this week why she became a nurse.
"I wanted to join the police, but sadly I was not tall enough," she said.
Had she been an inch taller, it's uncertain whether she would have gone on to become Bendigo Health's specialist palliative care service manager.
"My friend started her nurse training and we were quite close," Mrs Smith said.
Her friend suggested she just "give it a go", too.
"I loved it, absolutely loved it," Mrs Smith said.
Specialist palliative care nursing wasn't where she would have expected to have built her career, back when she was a 17 or 18-year-old "whipper snapper".
"I was really petrified of people dying," Mrs Smith said.
But her first experience of being with a dying patient helped change her view.
Then a student nurse, Mrs Smith found herself holding the woman's hand as she was dying.
Mrs Smith has now been working in specialist palliative care for more than 25 years.
"I suppose I started to see a lot more deaths in the areas I worked in and I wanted to make it right," she said.
It has been about 10 years since her family moved to Bendigo, and roughly four since she became the manager of specialist palliative care at Bendigo Health.
Wigan might have been home before Mrs Smith arrived in Bendigo, but she said she could never move back.
She has long since fallen in love with Australia and with Bendigo, and the work she and her colleagues do in the community.
"The hospice is seen as part of the community - I think that's really good," Mrs Smith said.
"And the hospice guys see themselves as part of the community, too. We come into contact with a lot of people."
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