As Saskia Post, she will be remembered always as the doomed heroine Anna of Richard Lowenstein's acclaimed film Dogs in Space (1987), in a performance which defined and dominated the heart of the movie.

But Post was a film, TV and theatre actress of rare quality and quiet grace, who performed in programs varying from television soaps to some of the most successful and challenging avante-garde live performance.

She also had great comedic timing and a raunchy sense of humour, as this well-known milk ad from the 1990s proves:

I first met Saskia Post as a young actor in Sydney in the mid-1980s, but got to know her better when we shared casual employment in Melbourne in the 1990s.

Whip-smart, unable to be hoodwinked and always, perpetually, interested in people's lives, she had a easy presence despite the fact anyone who met her and knew about her performances was usually in awe and somewhat starstruck (including me).

Her professional acting career started with the role of Julianna Sleven, a Dutch refugee, in the long-running Crawford production The Sullivans, set in Australia during WWII. She followed that with roles on TV soaps such as Sons and Daughters before appearing the AFI award-winning film Bliss.

But it was Dogs in Space which defined Saskia Post's career, a film exploring the music scene and inner-city share house life in Melbourne in the late 1970s. Starring Michael Hutchence alongside Saskia, the film vividly depicted a world full of creativity and chaos, shot through with black humour and the constant presence of heroin.

In a memorable scene, the occupants of the house in Richmond decide on a trip to Ballarat as it has the only available 24-hour convenience store, with direly hilarious consequences.

Saskia was as rock 'n' roll as anyone I know, including people who live in the music industry, but she harboured a real sense of equity and justice.

In recent times we were in contact more often through social media, although sometimes running into each other in country Victoria, in what she called 'destined meetings'. She never failed to ask how life was, and what was happening with people from our shared past.

Ballarat's Lou Ridsdale first met Saskia Post in the 1990s.

"My sister studied Professional Writing and Editing with her at RMIT," Ridsdale says.

"She was also mutual friends of a lot of my own friends in the creative world so we have numerous cross connections. I particularly enjoyed having conversations with her about social justice issues.

"Saskia was a special soul. She was very plugged into arts, therapy, wellbeing, and always carried about her world with great thought and care for humans as well as animals and nature. She seemed quite ethereal in some ways to me.

"Possibly because I had grown up repeatedly watching her portrayal of Anna in Dogs In Space, a film that left such a huge mark on my teenage psyche, when I met her in real life, her acting was so affecting that I couldn't quite separate Anna from Saskia.

But in time I knew Saskia as her own entity, and she was as mesmerizing off screen as she was on screen due to her very stoic yet very mindful manner."

Saskia was born in the United States in 1961, and was steadfastly proud of her Dutch heritage, parents and family. They moved to Australia in 1975.

In more recent times Saskia lived in Trentham, and pursued a career as a transpersonal artist and teacher. She was active on social media, and found connections from her past flowed back to her, as well as making new friends, a gift she never lost.

She was politically active and a passionate member of the Trentham community, fighting for environmental causes and social justice.

"She was a great thinker, and very compassionate," Lou Ridsdale says.

"Whilst she was rather private, something I always respected, she'd also pour her heart out to you as well. She loved living in the country after leaving the city life behind her.

"She seemed to really tap into her country life, and used nature and her landscape as a balm. What I didn't know was how ill she has been over the years, and it's something that I think the quieter life in Trentham would have assisted with her heart condition.

"She was a great actress, but better still a great human. Her legacy will live on."