From volunteer firefighters to volunteer bagpipe players, rural champions, charity founders and flying doctors — both the royal variety and Qantas variety — a spectrum of GPs have been recognised in the Australia Day Honours List.

They include well-known faces like Professor Charlotte Hespe, one of just seven people on the Order of Australia’s COVID-19 Honour Roll today, and a few former GPs who found themselves in unexpected new careers.

Here are their stories.

This story was updated on 29 January because, as is basically tradition at this point, AusDoc missed a GP in the honours list. Dr Matthew Young also received an OAM for his service to community health.