A crowd of about 800 attended St Brigid’s Catholic Church filling it beyond capacity for the Dubbo stalwart’s emotional funeral service.

The huge attendance left no doubt about the impression Bev had left on the Dubbo community as mourners of all classes, colours and creeds turned out in the cold and wet to say goodbye.

Surrounded by loved ones Bev passed away last week at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney. Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer late last year Bev underwent surgery in Orange Hospital. Complications after the operation saw her transferred to Sydney where she amazed specialists by fending off infection, organ failure and awaking from a coma on her 57th birthday earlier this month.

But on May 19 Bev suffered a stroke and massive haemorrhaging.

Her husband told mourners the decision to turn off Bev’s life support had been anything but easy.

“To go so far and battle through so much and so hard and get cut short, it’s not right,” he said. “On that day at 10 o’clock we said goodbye to that great woman.”

Bev’s tremendous determination to beat the cancer came from a tenacity she had displayed all through life. Her birth in Forbes in 1953 weighing just three pounds was “the first fight for her life that Bev had faced and she proved she was a fighter”, her sister Debbie Dennis told the congregation.

Her family moved to Dubbo in 1968, after a droving stint, and lived on Troy reserve alongside an Aboriginal mission where Bev befriended many families and endeared herself to the local Indigenous community for life.

“Always a happy caring person - if she loved you, it was unconditional,” Debbie said.

Bev started working at Dubbo Base Hospital in 2003 and through enthusiasm and dedication was quickly promoted to ward clerk. Part of her job was to transfer thousands of patients to smaller hospitals so they could be closer to family and friends.

Bev and Neil had married in the early 1980s and together they became an institution in the Dubbo rugby league community.

“We worked on things together, that’s what partnerships become,” Neil told the service.

It was a partnership which became pivotal during her illness as Neil spent nearly everyday by her bedside.

Neil said his wife’s “will to live (had) inspired” himself and their two children Paige and Nigel.

Father Brien Murphy held the service and remembered Bev as somebody who would continue to live “within the community”.

“People will say thank you to her, Neil and their family for all they gave,” he said.

Bev was interred in the Western District Memorial Cemetery.