My son was inconsolable and the back seat was an absolute mess. After a few minutes of trying to clean up, a stranger emerged from a nearby house

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

Kids always get sick at the worst possible time. For instance: in the middle of a busy motorway, one hour into a three-hour trip.

My husband was away for work and I was driving our two small children to see him, when one vomited in the back seat. I pulled into a slipway just off the motorway to try to clean up as best I could. The kids were too young to be trusted to sit there safely right next to a busy road, so I had to leave them strapped into the car seats while I tried to mop up the vomit with wet wipes. My son was inconsolable and the car was an absolute mess.

A woman in the queue said she was happy to drive an hour, pick up the vacuum, then bring it to Mum’s house. I was worried – but how wrong I was!

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

For a 94-year-old woman, my mother is still very busy and active. So when a vacuum cleaner she liked the look of went on sale at a national electronics chain, Mum drove herself to the nearest store to buy it.

Unfortunately, the shop in her area had sold out by the time she got there. The sales assistant told her it was still available in another Melbourne store – but that store was an hour’s drive away. As active as she is, Mum pointed out that at her age she really could not manage a drive of that length. She asked the sales assistant if they could transfer the vacuum to this store and was flatly told no.

‘Can you help me?’ I asked. ‘I think my car’s been towed away, and my children don’t have any shoes’

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

One of the first things we did after moving from the UK to Vancouver was buy a car. Unfortunately, I didn’t acquaint myself with the new road rules quite as quickly.

Which is to say, I didn’t know you aren’t allowed to park on busy streets after 3pm in Vancouver. Unaware and in a carefree summer mood, I parked outside an ice-cream shop and took my barefoot children in for a treat. We emerged a short time later, sticky and splattered in drops of raspberry, mint and chocolate, and found my car wasn’t there.

They relayed to me that the driver wanted more money. I went to grab my wallet, but they told me to put it away

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I travelled alone a lot when I was younger and often got myself into stupid situations. You think you’re immortal when you’re in your 20s.

One such occasion happened when I was 25 and travelling solo in Egypt, not long after the turn of the century. I had taken an overnight bus from Cairo to Dahab, which dropped me and my fellow passengers off in the middle of nowhere. I had to get a shared taxi into town at about 3am – one where everyone sat up the back in a ute tray – then find somewhere to stay.

Because I’d visited so often to print things, she made me feel that someone had witnessed the journey I was on, all the way through to its difficult conclusion

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

Mum’s disease progressed slowly at first, and then in a really big rush. After years of battling early onset Parkinson’s, in 2015 we were suddenly told she only had six months left.

I was living in Brisbane, Australia, and Mum was in a care home 600km away in Taree, so I began flying down every second weekend to visit. At the time, it was still common to print out your boarding pass – or at least, it was for me; I was a bit late to the tech game.

The roads were so treacherous that what should have been a five-minute drive took 40 minutes. My mum didn’t speak much English, so I did the talking

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I was graduating from university the same day Storm Goretti was due to hit Birmingham. The forecast was for snow – and lots of it – so I decided to get the bus in, rather than risk driving and having to leave my car behind in a snowstorm. Joining me was my mum.

We successfully attended the ceremony and managed to get on a bus back home but as the snow worsened, it broke down a kilometre from my house. The whole bus emptied and we were forced to walk through the blizzard. It was like The Day After Tomorrow out there. Tough conditions for anyone, but my mum, who was in her late 60s, was struggling to take even a few steps.

For hours we hobbled back, until we were close enough for him to place me down and run for help

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

We had heard there was an incredible waterfall somewhere deep in the Thai rainforest. Seeking it out almost killed me.

In 2003 I was travelling solo through south-east Asia when I met Paul, an American with an easy-going, natural warmth. We were the only two people bunking at a youth hostel somewhere in southern Thailand and got chatting one morning. When the staff told us about a beautiful waterfall not far from where we were staying, we made plans to hike there together.

I was just 10 at the time but my siblings and I will never forget the sense of safety, comfort and warmth they offered

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

We were doing the groceries when a blood vessel burst in my mother’s brain. I was 10 years old and on a family holiday to France that very suddenly changed its tenor. In the following weeks Mum went through brain surgery, suffered a stroke and was placed in intensive care.

We had been staying in a gîte but moved to a small hotel closer to the hospital. It was a terrifying and stressful time, even as a young kid who knew things were serious – but didn’t understand quite how serious.

I went out into the car park to see if I could spot anyone nearby who might have just left the restaurant

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I lost my wife in 2020 and my son in 2021. A few years later, I was living alone in a retirement complex when I decided to go out one night for dinner. There was a little Vietnamese restaurant nearby that my wife and I used to frequent, which had excellent food and held many happy memories. It just so happened to be Father’s Day.

I dined alone, ordering my usual rice paper rolls. When I went to settle the bill, the lass behind the counter told me my meal had already been paid for.

Before they left, the receptionist delicately straightened my father’s collar. I knew then they would be just fine

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

The food poisoning hit like a tsunami. I remember being out at a dumpling restaurant, grabbing a heap of napkins and just vomiting directly into them. I’ve never been sick like that in my life.

I was travelling in Xi’an, China, with my father, who was then aged 88 or 89. I really should have been in hospital but I didn’t feel I could leave my dear dad on his own. Instead I retreated to my hotel room, where I spent the night projectile vomiting. A horrible, embarrassing experience.

One immediately called an ambulance, another went looking for my younger son. And I still remember the small face of the girl who held her arm around me

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I was at the park with my two young boys, aged five and seven, riding scooters along a wide path that looped around the grass. My eldest has cerebral palsy, so my husband had modified a scooter with a large base so that we could ride it together. My son stood at the front and I stood behind him. It meant he could join in just like other kids, and he loved it.

When you have boys, you need to run them like dogs – the goal is to burn as much energy as possible every time you’re out of the house. So even though it had started to drizzle, we set off on another loop of the park on our scooters. But when we hit a puddle coming round the bend, the scooter slipped out from under me. We fell sideways, landing on the ground. I realised my son wasn’t conscious. In that moment all I felt was sheer terror.

We were exhausted and in need of rest. In the morning, the kind locals prepared a huge breakfast and refused to accept any payment

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

Sudan in the 1980s was relatively quiet. In 1987 I was based there, working for aid agency Care in the final years before Omar al-Bashir seized power.

One day I was returning from the city of El Obeid to the capital, Khartoum. After two weeks of dust and extreme heat we were thankful to be travelling overland across the desert at night, when it would be cooler. There were no tarmac roads, just dusty tracks. Two colleagues, our driver and I left at sundown for what should have been a six or seven-hour drive.

He walked out of his way to get me on to the right street, then handed me the brolly saying, ‘Here, you take this’

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

It was bucketing down, absolutely pouring. I was on my way to a birthday dinner but got lost in central Sydney’s labyrinth of streets, so I ducked into an internet cafe to look up directions to the restaurant. I then wrote those directions down by hand – such were the times!

As I stepped out of the cafe, I realised just how bad the weather had become and how ill-prepared I was for the rain. As I stood waiting to cross the road, swiftly getting wet, a man waiting for the lights in the opposite direction offered up his big rainbow umbrella to share. I gratefully accepted and, still a little unsure of where I was going, asked if he knew the way to the restaurant.

I heard the ambulance siren getting closer. And then a voice: ‘Where do you live? We’ll take your bike home for you’

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I was coming down a mountain bike trail when I became aware of an odd ache in the middle of my chest. At the time I was working as a specialist anaesthetist, and also had a history of working in intensive care medicine, so I immediately knew the significance of such a sensation. Which is: I was having a heart attack halfway down a mountain, somewhere an ambulance wouldn’t be able to reach me.

I knew that to have any shot of making it out alive I had to get myself down to the car park, so I coasted on my bike to the bottom of the trail, all while gripped by central chest pain. I made it to my car, got my phone and called an ambulance.

As a uni student my pay went towards petrol and books, with little left for fun. But I never expected anyone to buy me a ticket

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I was a teenager – just a little kid, really. It was 2003 and I would often co-present the Youth Show on Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ. Part of the job was to read out the weekly all-ages gig guide, at a time when there was lots of live music to discover.

Beck, one of my favourite artists, was coming to play at Festival Hall a few days before my 18th birthday. The show was all-ages, so when I read out the event details I cheekily joked that someone should buy me a ticket for my birthday. I was a uni student whose casual wages all went towards petrol and books for uni, with little left over for fun, so buying my own ticket was out of the question. Not that I actually expected anyone to buy me one – I was just being a brat!

I walked faster, sure that someone was lurking somewhere. Then a taxi pulled up next to me with an older businessman in the back seat

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

The Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst was not a safe place in the 1980s. There was this jittery vibe when the next heroin batch was coming in and people were overdosing like mad. But the area was also home to a scene of people who were into making little films or art and just going to the clubs in great clothes and dancing our butts off. I was one of them – 23, quite pretty and a hip underground darling.

One night I was walking home from Oxford Street after clubbing. I was always wary of my surroundings, because you grew up very quickly living in that area. But it was a nice night for a walk so I went for it. I remember how dark it was; a slender moon offering little in the way of light.

He didn’t just shout me a drink, he made me feel understood and seen. I’ve never forgotten his gesture

I had picked up a box of books at work when my back just went – I have never experienced pain like that in my life. I was off work for weeks, consumed by the agony of it and barely able to move. In desperation, I tried every treatment I could – massage, physiotherapy, herbal compresses. You name it, I’d given it a go.

On one such Hail Mary mission I went to a back pain clinic, where my lower back was injected with anaesthetic. The treatment was so painful, I left in tears. I remember walking out in such a state and thinking, “How am I even going to get myself home?” As I stumbled along, it occurred to me that I needed something to calm myself down. Spotting a chocolate shop, I stepped inside.

As an expectant mother bringing a little person into the world, you want to feel it is mostly filled with good people. In that moment I felt reassured

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

It was my first pregnancy and I’d been sick for more than seven months with hyperemesis gravidarum. In those late stages, after the HG finally passed, I was exhausted and overwhelmed. It was the dual feeling of excitement and trepidation. Was I ready to have a baby when I’d only just got used to waddling around and the discomfort of pregnancy?

One day I was at the shops and not feeling great. As I was walking down an aisle, a woman came up behind me. I assumed she was going to ask me to move or make a not-super-friendly comment. Instead, she said: “Do you know that your shoelace is undone?” I didn’t – I couldn’t see my feet! – and thanked her for letting me know.

I was only in my teens when, late at night, my Datsun ended up dangling off a median strip. Bracing to be harassed, I walked into a truck stop to ask for help …

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

My first car was a Datsun, in a delightful shade of baby-poo brown. I’d only been on my Ps a week when I almost drove it to total disaster.

It was 11pm one night in south-west Sydney when I approached the huge intersection that links the Hume Highway with Henry Lawson Drive. I was trying to turn right on to the highway and was the first car at the lights. With the baseless confidence of a 17-year-old, I turned … into the wrong lane.

I’m clearly Australian – I had my Adelaide cricket cap on – but that Pommy bloke still lent a hand to someone from the opposition

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

We’re great enemies in cricket, England and Australia. So when the Ashes returned this past summer, my son and I travelled from Ballarat to Adelaide to see the showdown in the third Test. It’s a long drive but we made it a boys’ trip, stopping in at pubs and all that nonsense on the way.

It was a great start to the essential cricket pilgrimage. The problem was when we got to the Adelaide Oval, the temperature was a gruelling 40C. Worse still, by the middle of the day, the sun was beaming directly on to our seats. There was no shade and no reprieve.