"I feel like this is in honour of my two daughters who are not here. And it's an honour for all the babies who are not here," she said.

She and her husband Steve had two daughters who were stillborn - Matilda and Grace. They have just had a daughter - Evie - who is the joy of their lives.

But the experience of the stillbirths scarred them - and spurred them on to campaign to improve the situation for others.

She describe the bereavements as a "silent and lonely place" but the trauma prompted the couple to raise awareness of what they felt was an under-recognised experience.

She helped renovate part of the foetal medicine unit at Canberra Hospital so that others who had just learnt that their pregnancy would not come to fruition would have warm and comforting surroundings.

She also gave powerful testimony at the 2018 Senate Enquiry into Stillbirth Research. The subsequent report produced a government commitment to fund research and action on stillbirth levels in Australia.

The couple also created a street library outside their home in memory of the girls they never had. Reading would have been important to them, their mother felt.

"I used to read to the girls," Bonnie says. "I hoped they would hear from my belly."

One of the achievements of their campaigning is to secure for parents who suffer "early pregnancy loss" a certificate from the ACT government. The idea is that by acknowledging the event, parents can better come to terms with it. It's not something which should be pushed into a corner and ignored.

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Bonnie has helped break some of the silence and awkwardness surrounding stillbirth and miscarriage. Her advice to others - like colleagues at work who don't quite know how to broach the subject - is to not shy away from sympathy and addressing the mother.

She and Steve have been trying for a baby for seven years and succeeded five months ago with Evie.

But Evie's two predecessors who didn't survive live in the parents' minds.

In 2016, Bonnie became pregnant. They named the as-yet unborn daughter Grace, but Grace had a heart defect and died after 19 weeks, before emerging into the world.

In 2017, Matilda was conceived and everything seemed to be going well until a routine visit to a midwife. Tests were done and it turned out that Matilda, too, had died.

"With both Grace and Matilda, I had a natural birth," Bonnie says.

"It was awful but a most beautiful experience of giving birth to our daughters. They were still our daughters."

In honour of her positive spirit and determination, Bonnie Carter OAM has been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia.

"I'm quite shocked," she said. "I will be able to show my daughter, Evie, what it's all about. I can say, 'This is for your big sisters'."

"I feel like it's divine timing to have Evie and then to have this honour. I can show her all the work we've done and all the work still to be done."