It was on a boat.

Ms Adamthwaite -– a nurse at Swan Hill District Hospital -- is back from her five month stint as a volunteer operating theatre nurse on the world's largest charity hospital ship The Africa Mercy.

During her trip she was based in one of the world's poorest countries, Togo, West Africa.

"They find the Australian nurses really useful," she said.

"They need to do a wide variety of duties onboard, so the ones from country areas are especially (useful), because we have wider experience."

Ms Adamthwaite said while she worked for long hours onboard, it was always fun and "felt more like a working bee".

"When family and friends hear about what Mercy Ships is doing, they say it changes their perspective on what's really important in their lives," she said.

Ms Adamthwaite said there was a real lack of health care services in the African region.

She said one case included a boy with an undetected tumor that was getting so large it was obstructed his breathing.

"There is a local hospital, staffed by one nurse, two rusty old beds in one room with another four rooms empty, virtually no supplies to run it, a pharmacy stocking virtually only malaria treatments," she said.

"One weekend I visited a village where a woman in labour needing a Cesarean section had to be transported to the hospital on the back of a motorbike because nobody in her village drives a car," Ms Adamthwaite said.

"In Australia you hear people complain when they have to wait in a hospital emergency room for a few hours," she said.

For more on this story, see Monday's edition of The Guardian (August 23, 2010).