This is an excerpt from an article written by Phil Jarratt for Noosa Today. You can read the original, complete article here: A morning in the rain with Aunty Bev | Noosa Today
“I was actually born in an aeroplane,” says Kabi Kabi Elder Aunty Beverly Hand, waving her arms through the air like a plane as we sit by a pot belly stove on a damp, misty morning in the forest near Mapleton.
“Mum was being taken from Goroka to Mount Hagen to have me, but I couldn’t wait,” she continues. “At least that’s the story she always told me, but I never got any details beyond that. She also used to say that I was born with a veil over my face. Sailors believe that this is a good omen, and if a member of the crew was born with a veil, you’ll be safe from shipwreck. Mum said if ever I was on a ship, I should tell the captain, and I’d be put at the top table!”
Aunty Bev’s laughter rocks the annexe of her simple shelter on a beautiful property within the Mapleton Forest. Like her Kabi Kabi mother, Bev Hand likes to leave her stories dangling, perhaps to entice listeners to use their own imaginations. The effect is quite mesmerising. The stories, whether you believe them or not, blend into a sense of beginning to understand an ancient culture, knowing that it’s a small step down a very long road.
Sitting with Bev while the rain tumbled down in the forest, I was reminded of a time long ago when our children were small and the great actor David Gulpilil, who was working in the neighbourhood, came to our house and put all of us under the spell of his Dreamtime stories. Aunty Bev weaves a similar web.
Her father, Australian born of English and Welsh parents, met her mother, Penny Bond, at the Kangaroo Point Methodist Training College, where he was studying for the ministry and she was working in the kitchen and learning public speaking part time. But for her father, the law proved a stronger calling, and in 1962 he accepted a position as a chief magistrate in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Unable to marry in Australia, the couple tied the knot in Port Moresby before heading to the back country. Four children followed, Bev’s airborne birth being the last.
Bev and her siblings spent their formative years on Huli country in the Highlands where, under the protectorate, “The magistrate and his family were like royalty,” she recalls. But when independence came in 1975, the family was sent home to Brisbane, where Bev encountered racism for the first time at Milton State School.
Her father left the public service for a time to renovate and sell houses, but when he rejoined to become an Aboriginal Affairs manager, the family was on the road again, from Bundaberg to Townsville and finally Roma. Bev says there were racist episodes at every school she attended, but with the quiet counsel of her mother, she rose above it.
“I actually loved moving from school to school because I could rebirth myself. Mum always said, write your own story but continually edit it. Going to new schools always made me step up to the plate, because you have to. I finished year 10 with a high distinction. I was in the debating club, the photography club, the student council, the school plays. On my first day of year 11 at Roma I got called to the headmaster’s office and he said he didn’t think I should continue at school because I’d be a bad influence. He said if I put one foot out of line I’d be gone. I told mum and dad and they just said, don’t worry, keep going. I was going to be a lawyer. I had one teacher who stood in my corner, but I didn’t last long. You can only take so much.
“So I left, had a child and started waitressing. A friend got me into a place at Toowoomba called The Haven, which was a kind of youth refuge run by Baha’is, and they got me into stuff like Bach flower remedies. I volunteered at the neighbourhood centres, working in the garden mainly. At 17 I became a charter member of Roma Rotaract Club. I was community services director and sergeant at arms. I loved the whole Rotary thing. You learn how to handle situations and protocols. Both my parents were political so I had that grounding already, but this reinforced it.”
Aunty Bev says her mum had “drummed the Kabi Kabi culture into us from the moment we could listen, and she’d sing us the songs.”