Judge Elizabeth Gaynor (County Court of Victoria) Interview 18/10/2005

It would have been very difficult to do it without John because there’s never been a demarcation dispute in terms of what needs to be done around the house. John, believe it or not, is the sort of bloke that if the washing’s on the line and it looks like it’s going to rain, he thinks, “Oh, I better bring it in”. He’s great with the kids. He always did most of the cooking and my career never came second to his so I never had that struggle that I think many women have. Even though a husband or a partner might do a few things, it’s done grudgingly and the career of the female is not taken seriously and to have that emotional battle and have a young family and have a husband who’s not cooperative - I don’t know how women cope with that. People used to say, “Oh look at that, (a barrister) being married to another barrister”, and I thought, “What’s it like not being married to another barrister”, because you are so emotional at the end of the day, you need to de-brief and we used to talk law all the time. We’d de-brief to each other and we understood what the other one was saying and that was incredibly important as well. It was actually useful having been the eldest of twelve because I was very comfortable and familiar with babies and little children and the only thing we did was we never worked in chambers, we always took our work home. I always worked on the dining room table, the kids would be screeching around.

Must have done wonders for your powers of concentration?

Yes. You just got good at it. And in fact it was easier when the kids were really little. You’d come home, I’d pick them up from crčche, it was like three hours of therapy, this dear little fat beautiful pink baby and we’d play and all those things, then you’d go to bed and you’d have a sleep and it was a bit more difficult when Joey came along. But just having these divine babies was just a wonderful thing when you came home. It was when they were at school that was harder because then you’ve got school holidays. Also schools these days love parents to be there, they’d have you there forty hours a week if they could. The great thing about the Bar is that you run your own hours so I would take days out so I could go and do tuck shop or I could get to school early. If there was something special on, I could fix my work around it pretty much unless it was a trial, but it seemed to work out pretty well.

Conducted for the Bar Oral History project by Juliette Brodsky, and filmed by Stewart Carter (People Pictures)