Mrs McEachern, nee Bell, was living in Melbourne when she died peacefully on Wednesday at the age of 101.

She was well known as one of six Australian nurses evacuated from Singapore with their patients aboard the Wah Sui during the Japanese advance.

Mrs McEachern came to Albury as a young girl and was brought up by her aunt Kate Bourke and brother Jim.

Her father had broken his back and her mother had to work to support four other children.

The Bourkes sent her to St Patrick’s Parish School in Olive Street, then on to St Joseph’s, until she was old enough to start her nursing career at Albury Base Hospital in 1930.

She was later encouraged to join the Army Nursing Reserve by Matron McAlister who had served in World War I.

In 1941, she was called up and within three weeks was in the Army.

Along with 60 other nurses she boarded the Queen Mary with the 10th Australian General Hospital and 7000 troops of the 8th division.

After a week at sea she was told she was going to Singapore and later Malacca where nurses took over a large uninhabited hospital.

After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese swept down from the north and put those inside the hospital in danger.

There were air raids by day and night and eventually they had to evacuate some of the sick and wounded across the Straits of Johore to Singapore.

A matron told the nurses to decide between them who would stay and who would evacuate.

It was a coin toss that sealed her fate on February 11, 1942.

A win meant she, along with some of the thousands of wounded, evacuated on board the Chinese vessel Wah Sui.

A friend who lost the coin toss stayed to help those left behind and became a prisoner of war.

Mrs McEachern later married Reginald McEachern (dec) and they had a daughter Anne (dec).

A family friend, Kathryn McCormack, yesterday remembered Mrs McEachern as a remarkable and extremely caring woman.

“She always had a visitor on her doorstep,” she said.

A funeral service will be held at 2pm on Wednesday at St Leonard’s Church, Glen Waverley.

She will be buried at Waugh Road Lawn Cemetery on Friday at 10am.