Debra Mortimer … Coronation at the Federales … Career highlights … Opportunities taken … Great cases of our time … Champion of good causes … Animals and children … Theodora reports 

What a breeze it was. Auckland – born to modest, grounded, compassionate parents. Thence to university and the law in Melbourne – eschewing articles with the greats at Arthur Robs and gaining hands-on experience at the small, intriguing law shop of Goldberg and Window, where her master solicitor dated his correspondence by reference to saints’ days. 

There was no shortages of prizes, baubles and honours. 

She heard the call from Gerard Brennan and associated with him on the High Court, 1988-1989. 

And onto Vic’s Bar for a rule of law career doing migration, environmental, constitutional, and anti-discrimination law – 1989-2013 – silked in 2003. She transferred for a time to the bar’s academic roll while her children were tots and she taught at Monash and the University of Melbourne. 

She even squeezed in an uplifting lecture to the guests at a Victorian bar dinner on the mysteries of ovulating alpacas. 

Mark Dreyfus nominated her for the Federal Court when he was AG in 2013. Here we are 10 years later, following the constitutional senility of Chuckles Allsop, with Mortimer crowned as CJ at a ceremony packed with First Nations people from the Kimberley, Torres Strait and from Cape York, family, friends, lawyers and official pocket moisteners from the merchant guilds. 

There was no customary welcome to country ceremony to mark the occasion. That is because the land on which the court sits is currently subject to a native title claim in the same court. 

Debbie Mortimer represents a distinct change in the traditional character of Federal Court chief justices, steeped as they have been acting for shopping centres in cases against the ATO. 

Not only is the CJ a woman, she brings with her the whiff of yoga, vegetarianism, tree climbing, gymnastics, fishing, surfing, bushwalking, wildlife photography and animals. 

The gymnastics reference was tortured both in 2013 and again at Monday’s welcome (April 17). 

Field agents report that the ceremony in Melbourne on Monday, amid the bowing and scraping, was genuinely moving. Others who might have hoped for the crown will be disappointed – naturally – and here our thoughts and prayers go out to Justice Bing Lee. 

It all started at the University of Auckland library, where her father ran the book binding operation. At age 14 as a school child she started working at the library under the eye of head librarian Julia McMahon. 

She was introduced to what a university was and what it offered. She also saw that the prospect of becoming a lawyer was something real, rather than fanciful; and the experience enabled her to embark on a voyage of discovery through books. 

“So you see,” she said, “opportunity is everything.”