On the best of days and worst of days Lesley Sullivan's warm smile has been greeting patients to a local doctor's clinics for five decades.
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The Dubbo Family Doctors receptionist has just celebrated 50 years of working as a medical receptionist - a career she fell into by chance but wouldn't swap for anything.
"It's been an adventure, it really has - but a lovely adventure," she said.
Ms Sullivan moved to Dubbo in 1973 when her husband was transferred to the town to work. At the time she was a trained Karitane mothercraft nurse but wasn't able to find work in the field after moving to Dubbo.
"Luckily one of the girls at Dr Adams, Dickens and Beith was leaving to go on an overseas trip and she rang me and asked if I was looking for a job, I said I was and they just said 'when can you start?', it was as simple as that," she said.
Before Dubbo Family Doctors opened in 2005, Ms Sullivan worked at its previous iterations - the Family Medical Clinic and the Dr Dickens, Dr Adams and Dr Beith practice on Wingewarra Street.
For Ms Sullivan, it's the patients who've kept her in the gig so long.
"Each and every one of them are lovely and they come in and they confide in you and you try to help them as best you can," she said.
"There's some joyous moments but there's also some sad moments when people have had a bad diagnosis or something like that. The job does have its pitfalls, it can be sad.
"But we're all wonderful here and we're trained to have empathy and look after our patients the best we can."
The most rewarding part of the job for Ms Sullivan is seeing the clinic's patients grow and hit different milestones in their lives.
"I see the children grow from a little four-year-old years ago terrorising us in the waiting room to now being pillars of society with their own children, bringing them through the surgery or doing really well in their chosen careers," she said.
Although she's been in the job longer than most of the clinic's doctors, she said she is still learning new things all the time.
"The biggest change from the beginning as I progressed through was technology, from paper files and switchboards when I started out to computers and mobile phones," she said.
"I'm very grateful I have lots of young ladies that work with me and if I get into trouble I just yell 'help' and they come and help me. It's a two way street, I'm very grateful for their help and I hope that they are too."
One of the biggest learning curves for Ms Sullivan was all the changes that came about during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of which are still in place at the clinic.
"[The pandemic] certainly changed the way that Dubbo Family Doctors have done things - we've swapped from lovely uniforms to scrubs and sneakers and we have car park consultations in rain, hail or shine," she said.
"At first it was stressful for both the doctors and the patients, it was foreign to both.
"But it's a very proactive doctor's surgery here and we still wear masks for our own safety and for the patients' safety - we can see the stats coming through and we know COVID-19 isn't gone and still comes in waves."
Taking to social media to congratulate Ms Sullivan, Dubbo Family Doctors said she is a "much loved and respected member of our team and community". And patients seemed to agree, flocking to the post to express their support.
"Thank you for looking after me for the last 50 years and five generations of our family in that time," one patient wrote.
"Your commitment to ensuring patients' needs are met does not go unrecognised by those of us who have benefited from this," another added.
Ms Sullivan said she has been overwhelmed by the response.
"It threw me a bit. Anyone who knows me knows I'm very quiet so all this kerfuffle - unbeknownst to me - was overwhelming, but I'm very honoured," she said.
"It's absolutely blown me away the nice things that they've said about me."
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