John Nevell has worked as a bank officer, farmer, apiarist, station overseer and grazier, and also served in the army for five years. He ran Beenleigh Art Gallery for three years in the early 1980s, and is a keen art collector. Nevell's works have been published in Queensland Country Life and the Catholic Leader. His wartime diary is held at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, and contains poems from monthly news sheets that were written while he was a prisoner of war of the Japanese.