The flowers were running behind schedule.
Still, they had come a long way, and had a way to go yet, so an extra wait was no major disaster.
"It's like Taylor Swift," a volunteer in a vibrant yellow T-shirt matching others in the Kotara offices on Wednesday said.
"We wait and wait and when they do eventually come, the crowd's all the more excited."
It was the day before the Cancer Council's biggest annual fundraiser, which this year marks its 40th anniversary, and there was a sense of apprehension about the place.
When the flowers did arrive - hundreds of them in a sea of yellow - it would be all hands on deck from then on, almost uninterrupted through the following day.
Every able hand pitches in for Daffodil Day, community fundraising specialist Katrina Buckley said. The flowers would need to be unpacked and put in water to help them open up after their long journey. Then, the following morning, everyone would be helping to see them sold across the city.
The largest non-government-funded cancer charity in the country, the Cancer Council was expecting to raise more than $5.5 million in a day from sales of daffodils, badges and stuffed bears.
The fundraising is to support the vast network of research, outreach, prevention and advocacy targeted at one universal goal: that no one faces cancer alone.
Ms Buckley only started working for the Cancer Council in the Hunter this week.
Like almost everyone involved, the disease had touched her family and friends.
As she recited the statistics - 19 people diagnosed every hour, almost one in every two Australians will be diagnosed by the time they are 85 - she took a moment to consider the enormity of the task of confronting and stopping one of the most devastating and prevalent diseases.
"Cancer has touched me a lot," she said.
"And I like a reason to go to work. It's not just a pay cheque."
"It's about saving your mum, saving your dad, or your brother or your sister. Your friends, and work colleagues. Cancer touches everybody. And the Cancer Council is about making sure that no one walks that path alone."
Daffodils, she said at one point, are the first bloom after a long, dark winter.
When Daffodil Day was founded in 1986, the rates of surviving a cancer diagnosis by more than five years was about 46 per cent.
The rate now is more than 71 per cent.
In the past five years, Ms Buckley said, more than $92 million - largely funded by the sale of daffodils and other fundraising efforts - had supported 235 researchers in labs working on almost 50 active research projects in search of better treatment, earlier detection, and more effective prevention.
The charity also provides phone support services staffed with experienced cancer nurses to support patients and families.
A patient transport service it operates in the last year had 19 volunteer drivers cover more than 85,000 kilometres in the Hunter alone, the equivalent of six laps around the country.
As the truck laden with flowers bound for delivery to all corners of the state pulled in on Wednesday afternoon, Ms Buckley had laid out a yellow-themed afternoon tea with Madeira cake, crackers, cheese and other appropriately monochrome nibbles.
Josh Mathews was another relatively new face around the charity's Kotara office waiting to begin unloading.
Mr Mathews had joined the effort about six months earlier. He had some time on his hands, he said, and a friend had asked if he could put it to use helping them out.
Helping meant joining the people who had all looked the most insidious of diseases in the eye.
Rather than turn away, he had put on their yellow shirt and gone to work determined to give more than cancer could take away.
He did not hesitate.
"It was a no-brainer," he said.
