Bev spent her early years in country Victoria. Holidays were spent exploring roadless areas of Australia’s remote north with her innovative and adventurous father towing his home-made caravan. In 1964, the family moved to Cairns where her father Vic Oke and his brother Gordon, an established pioneer of the marine tourism industry, bought the Cairns Baths and converted it into an oceanarium, caring for sick and injured marine animals and collecting others for display to the public. When the oceanarium sold in 1979, Bev gained employment with the Queensland Department of Primary Industries in Cairns, where she worked on fisheries research projects for the next eight years. She later worked for the Australian Fisheries Management Authority in Cairns, for a further three years