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Hybrid Publishers - Nimal Wikramanayake

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117 pages

English

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Like Winnie the Pooh, I thought a thought. Should I write my memoir and tell the world about the difficulties a brown-skinned man from an Asian country had to undergo in the legal profession in Melbourne?
Melbourne silk Nimal Wikramanayake’s memoir is a no-holds barred account of the scandalous racism he experienced as a Sri Lankan barrister who joined the Victorian Bar in the final days of the White Australia Policy. He worked hard to establish his professional credentials in the face of a consistent pattern of hostility, until he was eventually appointed Queen’s Counsel.

Readable and entertaining, though sometimes uncomfortable, this memoir is honest and doesn’t hold back from criticism of people he encountered and practices in the law. Now in his mid-eighties, Nimal has decided, against advice, to tell the story of his difficult career. The foreword is by the Hon. Justice Michael Kirby.

Sujets

Judges

Lawyers

Biography

Autobiography

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Publié par	Hybrid Publishers
Date de parution	01 juin 2022
Nombre de lectures	2
EAN13	9781925736779
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Published by Hybrid Publishers
Melbourne Victoria Australia
Nimal Wikramanayake 2022
This publication is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction should be addressed to the Publisher, Hybrid Publishers, PO Box 52, Ormond, Victoria, Australia 3204.
www.hybridpublishers.com.au
First published 2022

ISBN: 9781925736762 (p) 9781925736779 (e)
Cover design: Gittus Graphics, www.gggraphics.com.au
I dedicate this memoir to my dear, sweet wife of sixty-two summers, Anna Maria, who has been a tower of strength in our marriage and propelled me to the top of the ladder in not one, but two, different countries. I have set out in detail in my biography the extent of her efforts. I do not need to say more.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
1. The Early Days 1954-59: Should I Write my Memoir?
2. Returning Home: Troubled Waters, 1959-67
3. Life Changes, 1967-71
4. My Decision to Leave Home, 1970
5. A New Beginning, 1971
6. The Victorian Bar: Early Days, 1972
7. A Godsend x 2
8. Life at the Bar: Onward Christian Soldiers, 1972
9. Miscellaneous 1: Events
10. Back to the Law
11. Miscellaneous 2: Memories
Index
Acknowledgments
When I began writing this memoir over ten years ago, I thought, to put it colloquially, that it would be a piece of cake. I had already written a leading work, Voumard: The Sale of Land , in this country, and I found the original manuscript of the memoir completely inadequate.
I sought the assistance of my dear friend, Ross Howie SC, who was of tremendous help to me and I thank him for his assistance.
I then sought the services of Ms Irina Dunn to smooth all the rough edges of my manuscript. She did a magnificent job separating the wheat from the chaff.
The icing on the cake came when I needed someone to write a Foreword for my memoir. I had a brilliant idea - why don t I ask the Hon. Michael Kirby, who had recently retired as a judge of the High Court of Australia? The Hon. Michael Kirby s agreement to write a Foreword for my book is a magnificent gesture on his part and I am eternally grateful to him for his efforts in doing so.
Foreword
By the Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG *
The first part of this book is an extended snapshot of the privileged life that the author led within a notable legal family in post-colonial Ceylon. It tells the story of his decision to pursue his higher education at Cambridge University in England; and his return to Colombo with a good degree but modest prospects. How he slowly but surely built up a busy and varied practice as a barrister, becoming one of the leading junior counsel in the country . How he suffered various slights because he had formed a happy and enduring marriage, not only out of his caste but out of his race (his wife being of Italian descent). And how in a fit of insanity he decided to quit Sri Lanka, as his birthplace had by then been renamed, to migrate to Australia, and to embark on the risky project of re-establishing his legal practice in Melbourne.
In part, his unusual step of moving to Australia was a response to a change of government in his homeland and the commitment of the new government to switch the language of the courts from English to Sinhalese, in which he felt less competent. In part, it seems to have been a response to the hostility shown on racial grounds to his wife, an irony because of what was to follow. These early chapters of the book are like a black and white, or maybe sepia, film of days of inherited privilege that flowed because of his father, who had become one of the leading Queen s Counsel of the country. Right up to the time of his departure, the young Nimal would rely on a servant to squeeze toothpaste on his morning toothbrush, a luxury I had formerly thought was reserved for the Prince of Wales.
The second, and major, part of the book recounts the story of a struggle, as the newly arrived advocate found that the tales of the success of those who had gone before were greatly exaggerated, if not downright false. For a short time, he worked in a large Melbourne solicitors office where it was his misfortune to be bullied and disrespected, often apparently on the grounds of his race and skin colour. He took the advice of the bullies who encouraged him with the news that an earlier employee, similarly without brains , had gained admission to the Victorian Bar. He had taken up personal injury work and was doing surprisingly well, enjoying unmerited success which might also come his way at the independent Bar.
Fortunately, at this point, the author struck gold in the advice he was given by Peter Heerey; the examples he observed in Brian Shaw QC, Neil McPhee QC and Jeffrey Sher QC; and particular friendships that were extended to him by leaders of the Bar, like Robert Brooking QC and Louis Voumard QC. The latter was the author of the classic Australian text on land law, recognised as one of the great legal textbooks written in Australia.
After a short interval, the author was to become a research assistant for new editions, updating the text and later assuming responsibility for its continuance in new editions. When he suffered bleak moments of self-doubt and hostility, he reminded himself of the distinctions of his father-hero; of his fine education in England; and of the engagement and respect he had won from Voumard and a few other doyens of the Bar in Melbourne.
Sadly, there were many grim moments throughout his long career as junior counsel in Victoria. The centrepiece of this part of the book is the story of his struggle to establish his professional credentials in the face of what he felt, and describes, as a consistent pattern of hostility, frequently served cold with clearly racist language against which he reacted with protest, complaints and resentment that remains to this day.
The magistrate who had asked him to spell his name (which he had shortened against the notorious difficulties that Anglophones often suffer with foreign words) but who repeatedly called him Mr Nkrumah , seemingly because he was dark-skinned like the then president of newly independent Ghana, Dr Nkrumah;
the leading counsel who refused to add him to his clerk s list because he was sure it would not bring work to its members;
the foul-mouthed barrister who would greet him with the words Hello Blackie! ;
the young upstart barrister, who (thinking it amusing) greeted him in company, blurting out, Hello Sambo. Down from your tree? Or the County Court judge who called him My jungle friend ;
the youthful unfamiliar barrister who found him inspecting new chambers dressed in jeans and demanded to know what he was doing there, as if he had no place in the hallowed halls of his betters;
the senior judge who, in answer to a protest, told him: If you can t take what I did to you, you should leave the Bar ; and
even a Melbourne tram driver, who was delayed momentarily by the author s driving in traffic, shouted at him: You fucking black bastard. Move your fucking black arse!
These are but a few of the many events that have obviously left deep scars on the author. Yet, at an early stage, he was counselled by Dick McGarvie QC, already a leader of the Victorian Bar and later to be Governor of Victoria, who advised him: Nimal, when you are in the right, always make waves. Others taught him by their example, like Jeffrey Sher QC, who gathered fame by answering judicial bullies with firm insistence: I will not tolerate your rudeness. So when the author suffered intolerable overbearing conduct by public officials, he would, as his life progressed, take it up, complain, record the wrongdoing and insist on a response.
As he acknowledges, in many cases where he had been bullied in argument the judge in question faithfully applied the law and he won the case. Particular judges are singled out for their invariable courtesy. Some even progressed to personal friendship. Occasionally, this was only because the author earned a way by performance into the judge s esteem. Sometimes, he acknowledges, those who once bullied him later became quite fond of him. Still, we are left in doubt as to whether that feeling was reciprocated. Sometimes, one suspects, he found the earlier dreadful times that he experienced at the hands of judges - commonly attributed to racial hostility - just too hard to bear. And that explains why he has written this book with his selected memories, many of which are hurtful and painful, years after the exchanges that he recounts.
Because my own early judicial appointments were long ago and initially federal in nature, I came to know many Victorian judges and barristers, mostly senior people. Some of them became my friends. For me, there were none of the egregious instances of verbal violence and denigration recorded in the book, so I have no way of judging the accuracy and completeness of the events recorded. Nor is that my function in writing this Foreword. The manuscript that I have been given is, in parts, brutal and harsh. It names names. In at least three instances, the barristers singled out for racial hostility and inappropriate conduct were known to, and respected by, me. Even where some of those named may now be dead, their families live on. Those concerned have no opportunity to put their side of the evidentiary recollections.
The author confronts this issue by acknowledging the problem. He admits the good times he sometimes experienced in the unity of the Bar . He acknowledges the general integrity of the legal institutions. As an outsider, whose practice at the Bar was originally almost wholly in New South Wales, I find it difficult to believe that things would have been more confrontational and racist in Victoria than they were in the New South Wales of my youth. North of the Murray River, the Victorian Bar was con