Gayle was holidaying in Bali with friends, including Kathy Salvatori who also worked as a customer services agent at Sydney International Terminal.

Our thoughts are with both families, their friends and colleagues at this difficult time.

Once again, I want to express my sincere thanks and appreciation for the hard work, dedication and compassion of Qantas staff in Australia and Bali.

Your efforts have been appreciated not only by the Qantas Board and senior management, but also by the general public, the Prime Minister and other public figures.

Geoff Dixon

Vale - Gail Airlie

She always wore bangles. She loved perfume, too. On her dressing table were 25 bottles of scent - always the newest, the latest. Gayle Airlie loved womanly things, shoes, champagne, and make-up to define her beautiful eyes. Her sons Ryan, 23, and Cameron, 20, and her daughter Ashleigh, 15, inherited those eyes.

Ashleigh remembers how beautiful her mother looked that night at the Sari Club, in a new floral top, a three-quarter skirt and her blonde hair blow-dried by Candace, her best friend's daughter.

Gayle had gone to Bali to relax. She was tired; she lived life to the fullest, working long hours. She rose at 6am to go walking around Maroubra with her friends, among them Geradine, Michelle and her sister, Leanne. You had to be up at daybreak to beat the girls. Even in Bali, they would be up "too early, walking for ages", said Ashleigh.

Then there was the Pagewood gym, where she trained, her job at Qantas's check-in counter at Sydney airport, and the upkeep of the family home. Walk, work, gym, pick up Ashleigh from Brigidine College, cook dinner, drive over to see her partner, Michael Sant, or her parents, Pat and Noel Minton, back home ... then bed by midnight.

Ryan is going to miss her most "just sitting around the table, having a glass of red with her; talking and laughing".

She married Ian Airlie in 1976. They divorced, and she worked several jobs at a time to better herself and earn more for the children. A sales rep job, another rep's job at Time Warner, and finally the job she loved most, at Qantas.

She was, her children say, "a very, very good mother". Gayle was the central pole within the tent of her community, the focus, the strength.

The night she died, Kathy Salvatori wore a top and skirt in the vivid, tropical colours watermelon and pink. Her hair was wet, slicked back into a pony tail. Her friend, Samantha Garlick, remembers how beautiful she looked.

The summer colours were worn by Kathy's two daughters, Olivia, 9, and Eliza, 6, at their mother's funeral. They wore flowers in their hair, too, just like their mother had during the flowers-in-the-hair craze last summer.   At her funeral, 37-year-old Kathy was described by her husband, Craig, as an exotic orchid. But her photos bring to mind a hibiscus, sunny, glowing with colour, bright and breezy.

She had just finished decorating her new house at Botany in primary colours, says Samantha. "She picked every single piece for the house."

     Kathy and Husband Craig

Before she left for Bali, with Craig and the girls, it was all finished, except for the bathroom.

She loved to travel. As a Qantas employee, Kathy could fly away often. She'd been skiing in Canada, to Disneyland last year, and to Bali about seven times. The only trouble was, she couldn't travel quite the way she wanted - as a flight attendant. She was just a little too short to be accepted. The middle of three daughters of Noel and Barbara Hackett, she was always at the centre of attention, the vibrant woman who once ran the gym at Souths Juniors. You could see Kathy up at the front, urging the girls higher, faster, better, in step class and aerobics. She didn't just do it to stay in shape.

Kathy was a competitive woman, in the surf, on the slopes, boxing at Fitness First in Randwick.

Every December, she and her girlfriends went to Terrigal for a girly weekend. Always, they had their palms read at a cafe. Always, the palm reader told Kathy she was really "in tune".

Thanks to the SMH.com for the use of these stories and Pics.