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

It’s quite interesting when you become a judge because you’re not running on adrenalin. You develop this vast adrenalin pool, I believe, as a barrister and it feeds on itself so it’s actually like a heroin addiction really. There’s this massive adrenalin running through your veins and what happens is you’ve got a trial or a particularly intense part of a trial and the adrenalin starts running and you’ve got the stomach, I used to just get the stomach. I’d get the waves and I’d go across to court. I’d be like this but if I didn’t have it, I knew I wasn’t going to do any good.

And one of the worst times I experienced was in a murder trial where I was cross-examining a particularly crucial witness who was in fact a paid police informer and was absolutely central and I got up and I had so much adrenalin which transmits, feels like fear and nerves, it’s like stage fright, and I had so much adrenalin running through me that I almost fell over and I had to put my knee on a chair and it was one of the best cross examinations I ever did. But (if) it doesn’t feel as if it’s going to be, it’s very inauspicious to start off with. And that’s just part of the nature of the job. It’s very unhealthy actually, but it’s just adrenalin. You’re constantly in a position where you’re creating adrenalin.

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