By Mikayla van Loon
To many she was known as Nan, to others as a friend and to her family a loving, caring mother, grandmother and great grandmother.
Bev Trollope, born 30 September 1939, died at home on 17 September, surrounded by loved ones.
Remembered by her family as “always busy”, daughter Vicki Powell said no matter what she had going on in life, she always had time to help others.
It was this memory of Bev that will stay with everyone who knew her, a role model of compassion and kindness.
“My daughter (Melanie) said in her speech that Nan wasn’t only busy, but she said most of the time she was busy doing things for other people and she said that’s what she had always grown up thinking, that’s just how you live, that’s just what you do,” Vicki said.
“She would drive people places and she was just kind and giving. She was a really good person. She became friends with a lot of my friends, and my brother’s friends, she was just very welcoming, she embraced pretty much everybody.”
While the Trollope name in the outer east is mostly associated with the Ringwood and District Cricket competition’s Lindsay Trollope Shield, Bev too was a figure in sport but in her own right.
Alongside friend of 56 years George McDonald, Bev was integral in the founding of the Mountain District Badminton Association and the stadium build in Kilsyth.
To George, Bev was nicknamed “no problem” for her attitude in doing what was needed to get the job done – even if she didn’t quite agree.
“She would never say, ‘no’. I was going around Australia all the time working and I used to write things and send them to Bev, ‘Can I do this for Sunday? Can I do this?’ and she’d say ‘no problem, no problem’,” George said.
“She may not have always agreed with me but she would have 100 per cent supported me no matter what. She would say she didn’t agree but she would have never not supported me. She was like that in life. She would give everything her full support, even if she had looked at it and thought ‘I don’t think that’s the best way to go’,” Vicki said.
When the first instance of badminton began in 1968, new friends Bev, George and his wife Betty would begin a lifelong friendship.
By 1969, badminton had grown in popularity, with more than 30 players. In 1972, three courts opened in Kilsyth and a junior competition was started, seeing George and Betty’s children George Jnr and Audrey, as well as Bev and Lindsay’s children Vicki and Ken playing.
Come 1980, at the age of 40, Bev had taken it upon herself to get an over 40 age group competition off the ground.
Up until five years ago she ran the entire competition, which travelled all around the state – from Bendigo to Swan Hill.
Bev and Lindsay called Mooroolbark home for many decades but her early life began in Armadale, the fourth born child to Frederick Charles and Evelyn Daisy Cray.
When her father was enlisted in the army, the family moved to Castlemaine to live with Bev’s great aunt.
At around four-years-old and after the war, the family moved into their own home in Carnegie, where she then attended Ormond East Primary School and Hampton High School.
Vicki said her mum never particularly liked school and so when given the chance to leave, that’s exactly what she did. She trained as a comptometer.
“If anyone witnessed my mum on a calculator, she never lost those skills,” Vicki said.
When she was 16-years-old, Bev met her husband Lindsay at a youth club hosted by the Ormond Methodist Church. They married on 27 August 1960 and were together 55 years before Lindsay passed away.
They purchased their first home together in Neville Street Mooroolbark in 1962 and eventually moved to Woodville Road.
Bev and Lindsay became part of the Mooroolbark fabric and were the last couple to be named Mr and Mrs Mooroolbark at the Red Earth Festival in the mid-1980s.
Vicki said her parents “were very close” but were completely different in a lot of ways.
“Dad was very much a bit of a bull at a gate, at everything and so consequently there were things that would get broken and we can always remember hearing ‘Lindsay, how did that happen?
“It was tough on mum when she lost dad but he’d been not that well for a while, and it was really best for dad, in a sense, she knew that. She still had the rest of us, we all just banded together and got her through that.
“But my brother also passed away in 2019. That was tough. That was really, really tough. To me, that proved what a strong person mum was, which I always kind of knew, because she has had a few things happen over the years, and she just picked herself up and kept on going. But losing her son made me realise how incredibly strong she was because we are a really close family.”
Celebrating Bev’s life at the end of September, Vicki said she was surprised but not at the crowd that gathered to send her off.
With members from the RDCA and Mooroolbark Cricket Club there, Vicki said the respect they had for her parents was immense.
“From the time they named that top grade of cricket after dad, she just has always felt that was such an honour, and we’d go to the presentation nights. Then I started playing ladies cricket and she’d come and watch,” Vicki said.
“She really loved it and she got really interested in it. More often than not, she’d be there on the sidelines watching the ladies cricket.
“And they just embraced my mum. They called her Nan. The whole cricket club called her Nan.
“It’s times like this you realise how important it is to have something that you belong to, something other than your own family.”
For family and friends it is now navigating the future without Bev that will require the same strength she showed in life.
“I’m not sure how my life looks without her in it, because she was my go to person,” Vicki said.
“Now, I face the future without Bev Trollope which will be a hard task,” George said.
