Peter O’Callaghan interview 22 July 2009

I then had a great circuit practice both at Ballarat and at Warrnambool, and whilst it was very hard work, it was very remunerative work, and it had the disadvantage of being away from your family. But two of my great friends on circuit were McPhee and Villeneuve Smith. And one of the handicaps was that (with) either one or the other, I always drove, and they would sit in the passenger seat and read the briefs, in which they were opposed to me. But we had a marvellous camaraderie on circuit, and I don’t say they were the only two who were there, there were many others too. And it was also advocacy of a very high order, and I treasure the memories of those days. And that jumping across, as I guess I’m invited to do to describe what’s happened, culminated when I first gave up Warrnambool, and I then gave up Ballarat, and was given a suitable farewell in the Ballarat Club, and drove back to Melbourne in circumstances which you would hesitate to do today perhaps. And announced at the dinner table to my wife and then six children, although it remains six children, that ‘from now on, you will be seeing your father at home every night’. The next day I came into chambers and Kevin Foley said ‘look, could you go to Sydney to do an adjournment application in the Royal Commission’, and that was the Royal Commission into Petroleum, which was in 1973. And from then on for the next two to 2.5 years, I was a frequent commuter to Sydney, and likewise in the Prices Justifications Tribunal in the petroleum industry. And that really bought me back into the ordinary broadness of barristerial practice. I did I think four or five jury trials after I’d taken silk which was in 1974, and when previously I’d done that hand over fist. I did a lot of planning, and then I was into some white collar crime, commercial work and so on, and of course there was always hanging around the place, the inquiries, the Brockenshire Inquiry, the Davies Inquiry into the liquor industry. I was counsel assisting in the BLF Inquiry, and you reminded me, which I’d almost forgotten, that I was appearing in the Tricontinental Inquiry. So they took up a lot of time, and I do not complain one whit about that.

An edited version of an interview conducted for the Victorian Bar oral history project by Juliette Brodsky, filmed by Stewart Carter at Owen Dixon Chambers and edited by David Broder.