The untold story of how Bev Brock was a guiding light in the life of former rugby sevens player Ellia Green

Throughout the good times and the bad, there was one person Ellia Green could always count on for support and guidance. The former rugby sevens star opens up on the special relationship he shared with the woman he called ‘Aunty Bev’.

Ellia Green will miss the phone calls with his “Aunty Bev” Brock the most.

Whenever Green had news – good, bad or indifferent – the woman the Olympic rugby sevens gold medallist affectionately referred to as a “second mum” was always on the other end of the line with guidance, support and advice.

Green admits it wasn’t always the advice he wanted to hear.

But more often than not, Bev Brock’s words of wisdom were spot on.

“She was like a second mum to me,” Green said, reflecting on his close relationship with the former long-time partner of the late Australian motor racing legend, Peter Brock.

“I called her all the time. Maybe not every day, but a lot. Just to tell her everything; if I applied for a new job, the news of when my baby was born … anything that was good that was happening in my life.

“But then also the worst news. I had some mental health struggles, especially since losing my mum, and every time I just didn’t know what to do anymore I just always called her and she told me everything I didn’t want to hear.

“Her advice was always brutal, which I liked because I needed it. I liked her honesty, I didn’t like it at times, but I needed it.

“She just always put my mind back in place.”

Assigned female at birth, Green, who helped steer Australia to rugby sevens gold at the 2016 Rio Games, became the first Olympian to come out as a transgender man and underwent gender transition surgery in 2022.

Green has been left devastated by the loss of his close family friend, mentor and role model, Bev Brock, who lost her brave two-year battle with cancer at the age of 77 last month.

A well-known figure in Australian motorsport, Bev was a key fixture in Peter Brock’s storied racing career for almost three decades.

But for Green, she was the closest thing to family outside of his own.

The Brocks had been a constant presence in Green’s life since he was a young child.

Olympic rugby sevens gold medallist Ellia Green (left front) and his brother Mitch Green as children with Bev and Peter Brock. Picture: Supplied.

Bev, in particular, was someone Green always turned to in the significant moments in his life, especially following the loss of his own mother, Yolanta, to cancer in 2018 and his gender transition four years later.

While the transition was an easy decision for Green to make – and one he had planned for some time – he admitted to being terrified about how his decision would be received in the “outside world”.

But Bev Brock was a constant source of support throughout.

“She just showed unconditional love,” said Green, who kept the same name.

“I think her first response to me was, ‘I just want you to be happy and I see you for you – you are Ellia, you are my Ellia’.

“The way that it did not matter to her one little bit … she has never changed the way that she loves me, no matter who I am or what I do.

“It is kind of rare to have people in your life like that who only see that.

“No other fluff, it’s real and that is what I see as true love.”

The period after missing selection for the Tokyo Olympics, signalling the end of Green’s career, became a dark time for the Olympic gold medallist.

The loss of his sporting career coupled with his impending transition triggered mental health struggles, but it was his “Aunty Bev” who again helped him find clarity.

“I had so many mental health struggles, especially since losing my mum,” Green said.

“The mental health challenges of not getting picked for Tokyo, how everything that happened at that time was just so dark in terms of how my career ended and also the impact of social media after transitioning.

“Mostly positive but then there were also a lot of horrible things.

“Retiring after Tokyo really was a massive hit to my soul … it was a massive change, not just in my career, but everything.

“I think the best advice that she ever said to me – it is very hard because she said so many things – she basically said you can choose how much you let things get to you.

“You can choose to … absorb all of the outside bullshit or you can carry on with your life and you can shine like you do and that’s you.

“She said to me ‘If you did yourself in, do you really think that your mum would want to see you?’ She said ‘Absolutely not because she would be so pissed off at you’.”

Picture: Supplied

Green was adopted by Yolanta and Evan Green when he was an infant and moved to Australia from Fiji.

For as long as Green could remember the Brocks were a part of his life.

Green’s late father, Evan, was a motorsport journalist and a close friend of the nine-time Bathurst 1000 champion.

“My dad and uncle Peter were very close. In fact, he MC’d my dad’s funeral and also Bev MC’d my mum’s funeral,” Green said.

“They were always going to be my parent guardians if anything happened to both of them (his parents) because they were so close.”

Green’s childhood memories with the Brocks included the motor racing great teaching him how to drive on the Brock farm and painting on family trips to country Victoria.

“We used to go to Lake Eildon and paint,” Green said.

“Uncle Peter Brock was a really amazing artist. Obviously people knew him for being a driver, but he was so talented at painting.

“Uncle Peter and I used to do paintings together when we went on trips away and he taught me how to drive my first car.

“He had a big farm and he would let my brother and I drive every vehicle on the farm.

“He was like a big kid himself … I never saw him as the famous race car driver that he was. Even though we went to go and watch him at the big events, I didn’t really see him like that at all.

“I just saw this big kid that liked painting and driving on the farm and letting us literally run amok everywhere.”

The ‘King of the Mountain’ also helped cultivate Green’s Olympic career at an early age after serving as a mentor for the Australian Olympic team at the Sydney Games.

Ellia Green and her mum Yolanta celebrate winning gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Picture: Adam Head

“When he came back … he gave me quite a bit of the uniform from the Sydney Olympics and I don’t think I ever took it off, I think I wore it to every single training session,” Green said.

“I would have been in Year 5 I reckon. I don’t think I would have been older than 10 or 11.

“I didn’t even wash it for a long time because he already knew I had dreams of becoming an Olympian.

“He said to me, ‘Listen kid, this is yours until you get your own and then you have got to return it’ and then he added because I will be coming with you.

“He was basically part of the Olympic team as a mentor.

“I looked at it every day, I wore it every day and it was a massive, massive thing that contributed to my dreams becoming a reality one day. He just had so much faith that I was going to make it and he promised me he would be there.”

Green went on to make his Olympic debut in the gold-medal winning rugby sevens at Rio, 10 years after Peter Brock’s death in a car rally accident.

Since then, Bev Brock was the one Green leaned on for the life-changing moments outside of the sporting field.

Picture: News Corp Australia

“Aunty Bev was in our life a lot, especially because my mum’s illness was getting worse and worse throughout high school and afterwards,” Green said.

“She would just like always be there without a doubt, she didn’t miss a beat, she was at appointments, hospital visits, chemo sessions, everything.

“I don’t know what I would have done without her. She sat with me in hospital every day for hours on end, caring for my mum.

“I call her a guardian angel because that’s what she really is.”Green now has a two-year old daughter, Waitui, which means ocean in Fijian, and is honing some of the skills Bev Brock shared with him in public speaking as he builds a career in international affairs.

An accomplished public speaker herself, Bev Brock would often give Green feedback and advice on his talks during and after his rugby career.

It was all knowledge he had to draw on when he gave one of the toughest speeches of his life at her recent memorial.

“Even though it was the hardest talk I have ever had to do, it was something that I couldn’t not do considering everything that she was and has been to me,” Green said.

“But also because of all of our long chats about public speaking and she had the most to say about anyone in my life about public speaking, so she would be so annoyed if I did not have the courage to do that.

“In a lot of ways it was more difficult than my mother’s funeral for some reason. I think maybe because it was just reliving the trauma of it all and not having that person to lean on that I always knew would be there.

“Aunty Bev really was the most special (person) behind us all.”

Originally published as The untold story of how Bev Brock was a guiding light in the life of former rugby sevens player Ellia Green