Mother-of-two Ms Hodgins, 55, a teacher at Mt Clear Secondary College, was holidaying at the Samoan beach resort area of Lalomanu when the tsunami hit just after 7am local time.

POST A TRIBUTE TO MS HODGINS BELOW

Her distraught daughter Stephanie Hodgins-May said the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade notified her, her sister Carla and father Rod May of Ms Hodgins' death just after 6pm, after they spent all day at their Ballarat

home, desperately hoping she would be found alive.

"She was at the beach and she was happy, we are just glad she was somewhere she loved when she died," Ms Hodgins-May said.

"We had so much hope but we loved her dearly, very, very dearly."

Mrs Hodgins' family was alerted to the danger she faced about 4.04am Australian time, when she sent a text message saying she had felt earth tremors.

The family endured an anxious wait when all subsequent efforts to contact her on her mobile phone failed, but were given renewed hope when DFAT phoned about 4.15pm to tell them her travelling companion, Claire Rowlands,

had been found alive in hospital.

But their worst fears were confirmed just two hours later, when DFAT once again phoned to tell them Ms Rowlands had identified her travelling partner's body by the clothes she had been wearing.

Ms Hodgins-May said the family had received no further details last night about her mother's death.

Earlier in the day, Carla Hodgins-May posted a desperate plea for help to find her mother on the social networking website Twitter.

Lalomanu was the closest point on Samoa's second-largest island, Upolu, to the undersea earthquake that sparked the tsunami.

Ms Hodgins-May told The Age she booked the 10-day holiday for her mother at the resort, about three metres from the beach, after staying there earlier this year.

She said Ms Hodgins was due to return today to the Blampied home she shared with her family.

Ms Hodgins was one of three Australians confirmed dead last night. The others were 50-year-old Tasmanian woman Maree Blacker and a six-year-old girl.

Authorities had last night confirmed that 76 people had been killed in the disaster, although the number is expected to rise above 100.