In 1922, an anxious father was waiting at Pyrmont Wharf in Sydney for a ship to come in.

At home, his five-year-old daughter Phyllis, weighing just 8.5kg, was slowly starving to death on a diet of butter and whey instituted after her diagnosis with type 1 diabetes six months earlier.

The ship’s cargo included stocks of insulin and Phyllis Adams became the first Australian to receive the life-saving drug.

By the time she died in 1988, Phyllis had the dual distinctions of both living with diabetes and being treated with insulin for longer than any other person in the world.