Audrey Evans was an elder of the Gungarri/Kunja language group and an academic. Evans did not enjoy school as a child and was happy to start working at the age of eleven to help provide financial assistance to her family. Over her lifetime, she worked at cafes and factories, looked after horses, was a sex worker, and a mother to three children.
Evans first began suffering from depression and panic attacks when she was fourteen. She was placed in the psychiatric ward of the Brisbane general hospital several times before a doctor transferred to the Goodna Mental Hospital. Later she would periodically stay in the Goodna Mental Hospital, sometimes by her choice other times under police order.
After her mother died in 1953, her family split up. Her father went to work out in the bush, while her sisters and brothers left the family home seeking employment. Evans married a man who was physically abusive. She eventually met and married her second husband, David, who helped her work through her depression and panic attacks. Evans credits David as the main reason she never went back into Goodna Mental Hospital again.
In 1993, at the age of fifty-nine, Evans graduated from Griffiths University with a Bachelor of Arts. Her Masters thesis was published posthumously as Many Lifetimes (2006).
