After 4 years of declining health, Beverlee (Bev) Adams AM died at the age of 93 at Strathearn House Scone on Thursday, April 3,
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She packed several lifetimes worth of activity into her years and was one of Scone's prominent citizens from the 1970s onwards.
From cattle breeder to teacher, local government representative, environmentalist and sportswoman, Bev Adams epitomised the words live life to the full and ensure you leave a lasting legacy for your community.
She could be described as a pioneer in the many fields she entered, and her work was recognised with prominent awards.
Bev was born at Homebush in Sydney in 1931, the daughter of an entrepreneurial family of wholesale butchers and graziers.
She left Fort St Girls High School in 1947 and moved to Queensland, where her father had minor interests in beef cattle properties and meatworks. At age 20, Bev managed a 94,000-acre beef cattle property at Cape Palmerston, near Mackay.
She met and married veterinary surgeon Geoffrey Adams, an equine fertility specialist interested in thoroughbred horses. The family moved to Victoria, South Australia and finally to Scone in the Upper Hunter Valley, where her passion for beef cattle and her husband's horse breeding activities could combine.
She bred some of the first Charolais cattle in Australia at her property at Dry Creek near Scone while holding a full-time job teaching science and maths at St Joseph's Aberdeen. Generations of ex-students from the district remember her positively as "a bit eccentric" but an excellent teacher. An ex-student wrote to her after she retired, thanking her for interesting him in science as he took up a scientific research professorship at a European university.
Many Scone residents will remember her for her boundless energy and enthusiasm for various causes, mainly for the benefit of the local government area. She committed council to the Satur subdivision when there was limited interest from property developers and she planted many of the streetscape trees in Scone and Satur.
She marshalled resources from the state government to deal with outbreaks of Scotch Broom in the Barrington Tops, negotiated the Wingen Maid Nature Reserve declaration, and often rescued injured wildlife.
Students from St Joseph's were not surprised if their teacher bottle-fed kangaroo joeys were in the classroom. Pilots on the local airline were shocked when she flew to Sydney for a Premier's Council For Women meeting with a joey in a Qantas first-class cabin bag! She pointed out that the baby needed feeding and could not be left, and she ensured she only told them after take-off.
She was Shire president and councillor at Scone Council, head of the Scone Horse Festival Committee for some years and ABC NSW Rural Woman of the Year for 1995. In addition, she served on the Premier's Council for Women and the Coal and Allied Community Trust. She was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2000 for services to local government, environmental management, sustainable agriculture and rural women.
Older scone residents may remember her as a fast, skilful and unforgiving middle-aged hockey player, and residents of Dry Creek witnessed her athletics training for her appearance representing Australia in the World Masters Athletics Championships in Rome in 1985.
Few Scone locals knew that Bev played hockey for Queensland in the 1950s and had always been interested in athletics. She wanted to run in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne and knew some of the athletes who did, but in those days, she lived in rural Queensland with limited opportunities and other priorities.
Bev left instructions that there was to be no funeral service and that she should be interred in a wombat hole in her beloved Dry Creek valley. Nobody who knew her would be surprised by that request.
There will be a remembrance event for Bev shortly after a private cremation.
Alan and Jackie Wood
