She knows when to be cheerful, or comforting. When to fade into the corner of a room as final goodbyes are whispered.

Thirty years of volunteering in palliative care have given her this wisdom.

It's not something that can be easily described.

"It's a distinctive thing," Mrs Bunyan said, of how to know the right thing to say.

"It's a real privilege, that the family want you to be there.

"You feel you are helping them, comforting them - the family, more so than the patient. You can go and get them a cup of coffee quickly, and things like that.

"Some patients become very special."

A handwritten list of names tells the story of Mrs Bunyan's service to Mercy Health Palliative Care.

She was not present for all of their deaths, but each name evokes strong memories.

Most of those 21 people were elderly, and very sick. Some were young.

"I had a lovely patient that was 13 years old. Often I would look after that patient for three hours on a weekend," Mrs Bunyan said.

"You feel very sad that their lives are coming to an end in an early time.

"At meetings we would talk about it, and that always helped."

Mrs Bunyan trained to be a volunteer for Mercy Health in 1990, when the idea of palliative care was quite new - governments had only prepared position statements in the mid-1980s.

"I was at a party one night with family and friends and there was a man from Albury there - he asked me what I did on the farm at Cookardinia, and he said 'Do you ever come to Albury?'" Mrs Bunyan recalled.

"He asked if I'd ever be interested in joining a group called palliative care.

"He was very enthusiastic about it, and I liked the thought of it."

That was how John Henderson recruited Mrs Bunyan, in the same year Helen Martin was added to the second ever volunteer group by Anglican Priest Bill Squires.

"He was at St Mark's Church at the time - he rang me and said 'I'm doing a pastoral care course at the Mercy, you better come up'," Mrs Martin said.

"You never really knew what you were going to end up doing.

"I once helped clean out a house, for a lady who went into a nursing home and had nobody.

"It's lovely to see some people a little bit happier.

"It's a relief sometimes for the carer to have someone come, and they can go out for a while too."

In the earlier years before workplace health and safety - "the good old days", some would say - the volunteers could do much more for patients.

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Veggies from Mrs Bunyan's garden were highly sought-after. She happily took the blame once for a man's crumbs, from a pie that was certainly not spouse-approved.

Mrs Martin took patients for drives, helped with green slips for their cars, and brought them food.

Louisa Thompson, who is today Mercy's support person for volunteers, was once on the receiving end.

"Helen was one of the volunteers for my mother when she was registered with palliative care, and she would arrive with a quiche for us," she said.

"The neutrality of that visitor is so important - they're not emotionally linked. Families care about each other, but they protect each other as well.

"There's things not even I need to know, that are shared between the volunteer and patient."

There can also be conflict in families that the volunteers have to navigate.

And sometimes, there is no family.

"One lady I knew very well, she had nobody - she was distant from her children," Mrs Martin said.

"Before she died, she sorted out what she wanted to do with the little she had - and it was going to low vision support and the CWA.

"There were times when it was very sad, yes, but I could go home and be glad I was able to go there.

"You have to have some laughs, and you have some cries."

Relationships between patients and the volunteers can stretch over years - palliative care is not confined to the final months of a person's life.

"The criteria for someone to come onto a palliative care program is they have a non-curative, normally advanced illness, but people can live with their illnesses," Mrs Thompson said.

"In 2004, there was a huge fundraising effort in the Albury-Wodonga region - a 10-bed specialty palliative care centre was built.

"That then meant the volunteers who had predominantly worked in the patient's home could come into the centre.

"In that creation, all these in-house roles developed throughout the facility.

"Many of the patients on other floors are going through loss and grief themselves in the rehab wards; some of them will go home and others may have to make big decisions about living in assisted care.

"Sometimes, aged care and palliative care intersect. We have started to spread our volunteer roles throughout the facility and we have them in Mercy Place now."

Mrs Bunyan and Mrs Martin both fulfill some of those in-house roles.

"There's so much variety of work for us to do," Mrs Martin said.

"When I first started, once a week I would do the wards, and in the early days there were nuns around.

"They didn't do so much as what the staff did, they were more pastoral."

The efforts of the two women, who are the longest-serving volunteers attached to one of regional NSW's first palliative care services, were recognised by Mercy Health to coincide with National Palliative Care Week.

Their 30th year will not be their last; Mrs Bunyan plans to keep coming into Albury from her home, now Holbrook.

"We really miss coming in at the moment," she said.

"You usually build quite a rapport with the patient and it's nice for them and you.

"You can chat about family with them, and listen to their story - and they've always got a story."

Mrs Martin said the families' gratitude was more than enough thanks.

"It's very special," she said.

"I'm sure I received more than I ever gave."

The efforts of the two women, who are the longest-serving volunteers attached to one of regional NSW's first palliative care services, were recognised by Mercy Health to coincide with National Palliative Care Week.

Their 30th year will not be their last; Mrs Bunyan plans to keep coming into Albury from her home, now Holbrook.

"We really miss coming in at the moment," she said.

"You usually build quite a rapport with the patient and it's nice for them and you.

"You can chat about family with them, and listen to their story - and they've always got a story."

Mrs Martin said the families' gratitude was more than enough thanks.

"It's very special," she said.

"I'm sure I received more than I ever gave."