The final profile photo the 26-year-old posted on Facebook was with a massive snake draped around her neck.

A day earlier it had been a shot of her plummeting to earth at speeds of more than 200km/h after stepping out of a perfectly functional plane.

Some people couldn’t think of anything worse but not this little Kiwi. She was on holidays and adventure was the name of the game.

That adventurous streak also extended to travelling solo, so much so that police would later need to make a public appeal for help to piece together her movements.

Having flown to Queensland for a friend’s wedding, they knew Warriena spent three nights at the wedding resort. They knew there was one night at an inner Brisbane motel and time spent with friends, before booking into the Crowne Plaza at Surfers Paradise the following day.

Four of her 10 nights in the country couldn’t be accounted for though, nor her companions during that period. Normally that wouldn’t have been an issue. She wasn’t the first young, independent woman to travel on her own.

Then, on her second night on the Gold Coast, Warriena decided to head out.

After several days swapping messages on dating app Tinder, she chose to meet up with a stranger who had told her he wanted “to do dirty things” to her, asked if she could be “a freak in the sheets” and boasted he was “a pornstar after a few drinks”.

They met in Cavill Mall about 8.40pm. They hugged and walked into Surfers Beergarden before strolling back out a few minutes later. They stopped by a bottle shop to pick up what looked like a six-pack of alcohol.

Then, about 8.50pm, CCTV footage captured the pair walking into the Avalon apartments where the man lived.

Maybe it was her adventurous spirit. Maybe she didn’t want to spend another night on her own. Maybe it was just a snapshot of the modern world.

All that is certain is that hooking up with Gable Tostee would have far greater consequences — for both of them — than anything Warriena had done on her holiday until that point.

PORTRAIT OF A VERY PRIVATE WOMAN

BEFITTING a woman who was “very private”, painting a portrait of Warriena Wright is no easy task.

“She would really hate all this attention about her,” Marreza Tagpuno told a packed press conference six days after her elder sister fell to her death from Tostee’s balcony in the early hours of August 8, 2014.

“It is hard for me facing the loss of my sister without knowing what happened in the last hours of her life.”

That lack of detail is no longer the case. For the past week and a half, Marreza and her loved ones have been subjected to learning more about her sister’s final hours than they ever wanted.

Each day of the Supreme Court trial has delivered another headline moment, none more harrowing than an audio recording of Warriena shouting “no” 33 times in the moments leading up to her fall.

“I did not want to hear my daughter screaming ‘no, no, no’,” Merzabeth Tagpuno said on the fourth day of the trial via a family spokeswoman.

“I did not want to remember her like that.”

The Warriena they want to remember — or Rrie as they knew her — is the practical joker, the entertainer, the aspiring photographer. She’s the one who posted articles online to raise awareness of animal rights and wrote to Parliament requesting harsher penalties for such abusers.

Having grown up in Lower Hutt, Wellington, she attended a Seventh-Day Adventist Church where her Philippines-born mother was a deacon. Her father has not been referenced publicly during the family’s ordeal.

At the time of her death, Warriena was working for Kiwibank. She was also living with her little sister.

“Rrie was the most important person in my world,” Marreza said.

“Most of the time we really only had each other. She looked after me and always made sure that I was OK.”

Warriena possibly thought she could also look after herself. Having previously trained in Muay Thai for a month, she could be heard in the audio recording telling Tostee that she would break his jaw.

Tough talk is one thing. Scars are another.

In a possible sign towards a more vulnerable woman, the court was told she had several old scars on her wrists and thighs that had been self-inflicted. One on her thigh measured 12cm.

Having flown to Brisbane for the murder trial, what was being revealed in the courtroom clearly took a toll on Warriena’s family. After attending on the opening days, both her mother and sister were rarely sighted as the trial progressed.

The image of Merzabeth sobbing into her hands as the prosecution described how her daughter fell from the building was particularly heartbreaking.

The judge’s subsequent decision to release audio to the media of Warriena’s desperate cries of “no” as she was locked out of Tostee’s apartment also infuriated the family and saw her mother increasingly isolate herself from the courtroom.

“When this is over, I will go back to New Zealand,” she said last week.

“I want to be left alone … no matter how this goes, I just want to go home.”

Less than three months earlier, the same woman had posted a selfie on her Facebook page wearing a beaming smile. Friends rushed to comment about how great she looked.

“I’m getting there,” she replied. “Trying to be happy.”

As she now tries to come to terms with the result of the court case, that smile must seem a lifetime ago.