When Toni McNamara made her mind up she was heading to Port Douglas from Melbourne in 1978, she packed up her two children, her pair of dalmatians, and their worldly belongings in their Renault car and just headed off.

They slept in the vehicle on the way because accommodation was not pet-friendly back then, and arrived in the middle of a “wet, wet season” with water all over the roads, daughter Kelly remembers.

“We only just managed to get into the town,” Kelly says.

The trip epitomised the independent spirit of Toni - who died last Saturday, January 18, surrounded by loved ones at age 90 after a short illness - and was one she never regretted.

“She just absolutely loved this town and all the people in it,” Kelly says.

“She just found her home here.”

Tonia “Toni” Norwood McNamara was born in Rotherham in the UK on December 21, 1934, with her childhood thrown into disarray when World War II started in 1939.

Her father went off to fight and her mother had to keep on the move to avoid German bombing raids.

Years later, Toni was at a dinner party when her friends were talking about this beautiful place they had visited in Far North Queensland called Port Douglas.

She decided there and then she had to see it for herself.

After eventually relocating the family permanently, Toni was persuaded in the early ’80s to invest in a shoe shop on the main road.

But the person who talked her into the move soon left town, and she found herself reluctantly running the shop with the help of her daughter, which remains in Macrossan Street to this day.

Toni put down roots on Coral Drive in an “amazing pole home” surrounded by undergrowth when that was known as the outskirts of town.

“Everybody laughed at her at the time,” Kelly says.

“They said ‘why would you want to live all the way out there?’”

Some of the many causes Toni was involved in included the Douglas Shire Sustainability Group, the Waterfront Management Committee and Paws and Claws animal refuge.

Tributes posted online by friends have described her as “incredible, passionate, intellectual, kind and fierce”, a “committed activist”, a “real Port identity”, a “wonderful character” and a “lovely, elegant lady”.

Toni McNamara is survived by daughter Kelly, son Tim and grandchildren Chelsea, Esteena and Mcleod.