When Joyce Koch joined the Department of External Affairs in 1950 as a 24-year-old typist, she had never travelled outside Australia.

But by the time Joyce retired after a remarkable 35-year foreign service career, she had served in 11 Australian diplomatic missions around the world, including in major posts such as Washington, Tokyo and New York, several hardship posts and in a couple of war zones.

And she had worked directly with some of Australia's most senior and respected career diplomats of her era, including Peter Henderson, Nicholas Parkinson, Alan Renouf, James Plimsoll and Patrick Shaw.

For the many people who knew Joyce well, it was not altogether surprising that her foreign affairs career had its beginnings at a party.

At the party, in Brisbane, she met a young man who worked at External Affairs and had just been posted to Noumea. He mentioned there was also "a girl" working in the office there.

As Joyce recalled in Rachel Miller's book Wife and Baggage to Follow, her immediate response was: "Oh you have girls there too? I'd love a job like that."

"That'll be easy," was the reply.

Soon after this encounter, Joyce was invited to undertake a Public Service Board entry test, and on May 19, 1950, she was appointed to the Department of External Affairs as a stenographer Grade 1.

When Joyce arrived in Canberra in early 1950, there were just 12 women in the department's diplomatic stream of 140. Joyce, like most women in the department at that time, became one of the 260 non-diplomatic staff.

As a newly recruited interstate public servant, Joyce was accommodated initially in hostels, firstly in Brassey House which she thought was "cold and miserable" and then in Reid House which she described in one word: "terrible".

But Joyce was not daunted. She decided then and there that the answer was simply to go on postings, one after the other whenever she could, and only return to Canberra if she had to.

Throughout her career she was sent on postings including to Jakarta, Tokyo, Colombo, Saigon, New York, Buenos Aires, Washington and Belgrade.

At posts, Joyce was frequently involved in arrangements for high-level visits, including by Australian prime ministers and ministers. In Saigon in 1966, she helped to organise a visit to war-torn Vietnam by then prime minister Harold Holt.

She travelled widely when she could and had particularly vivid memories of sailing to Bali, travelling to the Sindh Desert in Pakistan and driving from New York to Newport Rhode Island for the 1983 America's Cup series.

But it wasn't always smooth sailing, particularly in the early years. Finding a decent place to live, for example, was often a challenge.

When she arrived in Jakarta on her first posting there, suitable accommodation was in short supply and the only available option initially was in a down-market hotel where Joyce had to share a room with other "itinerant" female travellers. Joyce was told this was because of a local belief that any woman living on her own would probably be perceived as a prostitute.

Throughout her career, Joyce was highly respected for her professionalism, integrity, loyalty, judgment and discretion.

Some felt that had she joined the department in a later era, when position classifications were not as stratified and male officers weren't always the automatic choices, she would certainly have risen to much higher levels.

One who believed this was Robert Furlonger, Australia's ambassador to Indonesia from 1972-75 when Joyce was his personal secretary. Mr Furlonger mused in a light-hearted poem to celebrate Joyce's 70th birthday that under different circumstances, "Who knows? You might have been the taskmaster and I the tasked".

And Cavan Hogue, another former ambassador, described Joyce as a legend who was "probably the last of the well-liked and highly influential PAs".

Joyce's contribution to Australian diplomacy was recognised officially in 1977 when she was awarded the British Empire Medal for Public Service.

In 1993 she was also awarded the Vietnam Logistic and Support Medal, recognising the service of Australian support personnel during the war.

Joyce retired from the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1985, having spent most of the previous 35 years travelling the world. Joyce brought the world she had discovered and the life she lived to her new "post" - her home in Griffith - where she happily spent the next 37 years of her life.

Joyce is survived by her three nephews and their families in Queensland and her cousins and their families.