HE WAS about five when he began packing his belongings into a butter box, ‘leaving home’ for the neighbours next door. Prompting his older sister and brother to nickname him the Butter Box Kid.
A year later he was happily singing cowboy songs on a train to returning World War II soldiers. They liked his performance so much they cheered and paraded him on their shoulders.
It was a most unlikely beginning for Bundaberg-born Bevan Pressler (detailed in his unpublished memoirs) who was destined to spend the last five decades of his life in the Fassifern with his wife, Rosie, during which time they raised two sons and two daughters.
The burly, gruffly outspoken 82-year-old died in St Andrews Hospital, Ipswich, last Saturday robbing the community of an active voice against bureaucratic controls that threaten lifestyles and freedoms with a growing web of red tape and a burgeoning burden of costs.
It was a voice born of experience as a cane farm worker on his family and other farms in Bundaberg … as a digger of ditches and water courses … a self-taught mechanic able to make do with materials at hand to repair tractor parts or their engines, even adding improvements through imaginative innovation.
All of this backed up by the discipline and actions of his year-long role as a Builders Labourers Union rep for 260 workers at a Bundaberg construction factory - during which time he managed to negotiate pay and other disputes without strike action - and his 27 years as a dairy and beef farm manager at Harrisville.
Bevan waged numerous battles for community causes in the Fassifern and Scenic Rim through Letters to the Editor and public campaigns that saw him clash with leading public figures.
One of those was long-serving Boonah Shire Mayor, John Brent, who became the inaugural mayor of the newly amalgamated Scenic Rim council and served a further four-year term before suffering his first ever defeat as leader.
The two men clashed over that council’s plans to build a new $6 million Beaudesert library in Davidson Park (near the council buildings), which Bevan described as a rate-busting ‘Taj Mahal’.
As part of his campaign, Bevan and his wife, Rosie, visited shops and cafes across the Scenic Rim leaving petitions to be signed and finally gathering 4,485 signatures against the new library plans.
In the end a lack of expected funding was reported to have caused the project to be shelved.
Mr Brent has described Bevan’s death as ‘a sad loss for the community’.
“While we did not see eye to eye on many occasions that is part of public life,” he says.
“He was accustomed to hard work through his earlier life as a dairy farmer and, with the support of his wife, Rosie, had always been involved in this community.
“He was never afraid to speak up in what he saw as the public interest. And he certainly articulated his views clearly.”
Although Bevan left school at 14, midway through
sixth grade, he was happy with numbers, well read, had a library of books, music records and videos, wrote bushman-style poetry, and combined his rough literary skills with practical common sense
It was at the Bendemeer Farm in Harrisville where he and his wife, Rose, raised their four children, and he made his first impact as a community activist.
At Milora, south of the farm, the main rural road had a sudden uphill twisted configuration that hid the lower northern access to Limestone Ridges Road.
By the early ‘90s, this had become a notorious local blackspot for traffic accidents. Yet, despite a growing toll in injuries and fatalities, nothing was being done to improve the road situation.
Bevan called it the Milora Triangle and began his safety campaign in the Fassifern Guardian and other media. Then he organised a major public meeting in the Harrisville School of Arts. A packed hall listened to and questioned guest speakers ranging from the Mayor of the then Moreton Shire Council, Cr John Nugent, and other leading figures from State Cabinet, engineering, traffic and police agencies.
In the months that followed a major program of roadworks changed not only the Milora Triangle, but continued as an ongoing project that improved traffic conditions along the through road past Harrisville, up to and beyond the accident prone Cemetery Corner.
Mr Nugent, 86, cannot recall much of that meeting almost 40 years ago, but says he remembers Mr Pressler, describing him as a man who ‘really thought of his community’.
He adds: “You have lost someone who put the community before himself as an individual and that is rare indeed.”
Bevan was brought up in Bundaberg and his memoirs record that in those early years he travelled widely throughout Queensland and Northern NSW and at one stage was coaxed into overstaying a holiday on South Molle Island where he acted as a proficient but unpaid guide for other visitors.
Return visits to parts of North Queensland in later life caused him to lament the radical changes that progress had brought to the natural beauty of places such as Airlie Beach, South Molle and Proserpine – and to be wary of them in the future.
His memoirs remind us that before the end of the war in 1945 – as in our Covid-19 era – only essential travel was allowed: “People had to stay in their own town areas and petrol, along with all goods including food, was rationed. All train travel was reserved for troop movements within Queensland.”
But when the wartime bubbles were burst, young Bevan was on a train from Bundaberg to Brisbane singing Ragtime Cowboy Joe, and Don’t Fence Me In to the troops.
Twenty-six years later on May 29, 1965, Bevan married Rose Grech, who had been nursing at the Bundaberg Hospital. They moved to the Bendemeer Farm at Harrisville 15 years later.
They were Boonah residents when they first campaigned against the Beaudesert ‘Taj Mahal’. But last March, Bevan was disappointed to learn that the Beaudesert library project had been resurrected by the Greg Christensen-led Scenic Rim Council.
This time the estimated cost was $13.5 million dollars, plus the possibility that this could rise up to 40 percent more should appropriate funding allow it.
Bevan had campaigned for Christensen in his first successful tilt at the mayoralty. And he claimed the new mayor later thanked him for delivering winning votes in Mt Tamborine.
But his memoirs disclose he was later upset to be rejected offhand by the new mayor when he phoned him in an attempt to get a more sympathetic ear for a young Mt Walker couple facing a quarry on their doorstep.
Later, he and Rosie launched a second bid to gain signatures against the library, only for age and ill-health to affect their campaigning – and the result was disappointing.
Even so he was successful in gaining permission to address the full council and explain the objections of a body of ratepayers.
But a recording of that meeting suggests it could have been organised for a different purpose.
Rather than listen politely to his case, the interruptions, questions, and interrogations had the effect of confusing and embarrassing the tough campaigner.
He wrote later: “I felt I’d been ambushed by what was a deliberate attempt to make me look inferior. I don’t blame all the councilors for what happened. But I’m sure Greg Christensen will never sponsor me for Australian of the Year.”
[Mayor Christensen could not be contacted for comment.]
At the time, Bevan and Rosie were being dogged by health issues. Bevan’s dated back to days when he was a victim of a number of farm accidents. At times these resulted in the odd collapse from crippling back pain, resulting in him lying still where he had fallen until the pain passed.
On another occasion his legs gave way and, unable to stand, he had to pull himself through deserted paddocks for a few kilometres before reaching home.
Rosie’s problem was a form of memory disorder and personality change. But Bevan was devoted to her and nursed her at home for some five years.
Even after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer he persisted in looking after her, with the help of Aged Care workers, until his own health problems made that impossible.
So then he visited her at the Fassifern Aged Care Facility in between his own visits to specialists.
He is survived by Rosie, his children, Tom, Catherine and Rebecca, and their families. His second son, Graham died earlier of cancer.
He closed his memoir with these words: “I married a wonderful woman and we had four beautiful children …
“It isn’t the money in the bank but how happy your life is.”
