Hoffmann, self-proclaimed witch, planned her exit well

Anna Hoffman died on Saturday in Napier, aged 76. Photo / Natalie Slade

Notorious eccentric and self-styled witch Anna Hoffman - whose impish antics once rattled 50s and 60s Auckland - prepared for her death down to the last cup of tea and scone.

Hoffman died at her Napier home on Saturday after a battle with cancer, only days after the Herald interviewed her. Born Lorna Jenks in Papatoetoe, the 76-year old scandalised 1960s Auckland.

She left home at 16 and was known for her gypsy lifestyle, identifying with the black arts, and was once arrested for selling marijuana to an undercover policeman in Auckland.

Wearing purple as she rested at her Napier home, she told the Herald: "It's good to be alive."

She chose her coffin, which was lined in purple velvet - her favourite colour.

"My coffin is specially made for me, it's part Maori, part celestial," she said.

Hoffman had the order of service prepared in advance, featuring Sudanese traditional music, a Cat Stevens number and a song written about her by Australians Peter Hicks and Geoffrey Francis.

After her cremation, there is to be a celebration at her friend Colin James' Friends Bush garden in Napier.

Her archaeologist daughter and only child, Vanessa, will take some of her ashes to a family property in Bali.

The remainder will go to a Northland marae where her parents lie, stopping in Auckland for tea and scones with old chums, including 81-year old artist, tap dancer and banquet hostess Diana Wong, and Shanghai Lil's pianist Billy Farnell.

"I expect it will be a tiny, rowdy farewell," Hoffman said. "I'm finding out I'm being remembered more fondly than I ever dreamed and I'm quite touched by that. As long as when people think of me they have good memories and a good laugh."

In her three volumes of memoirs, Hoffman claimed an overrated reputation as a femme fatale and sex symbol.

She said a prominent Aucklander - whom she would not name - offered her lots of money to initiate his son into sex.

She went along with the sex symbol reputation, saying the newspaper Truth was always writing outrageous things about her, which she felt she had to live up to.

She and pianist Farnell milked goats they kept in Grafton Gully around midnight and once police and a Truth reporter turned up expecting goat sacrifices and blood-drinking.

She apparently got a reporter to drink goat's milk, telling him it was blood, then ordered him to take off his clothes and ride naked on the back of a goat. But a policeman stepped in.

Truth followed with the headline "Gruesome Goings-On In Grafton Gully".

Hoffman claimed to have witnessed the 1963 Bassett Rd machine gun murders - but friends say she was in Australia at the time.

In 2012 she claimed to be in possession of one of Australia's most sought-after relics: Ned Kelly's skull, which she said was given to her by a mysterious uniformed man she met at a family dinner in Melbourne in 1980.