Hard times and finally making the grade

Anna Maria worked as a cleaner to help tide us over

I was admitted to practice as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria on December 1, 1971. My dear friend, Ronnie de Kretser, was a partner in the firm of Weigall and Crowther, and he arranged for my admission to be moved by Robert Brooking Esq., QC, later Justice Brooking, and a young barrister by the name of Tim Smith, later Justice Smith.

I arrived for work the following Monday and was shown into my office. This was the second shock I received in the space of just over one month. It was not a room but a little cubicle about 10 feet long and six feet wide. It was the space between the boardroom and the main office complex. A large filing cabinet was placed by its entrance and next to it was a small desk and chair for me to use. The only redeeming feature of the cubicle was the large window to the left of my desk which ran all the way from floor to ceiling and looked down onto Lonsdale Street. Little did I realise that I was soon to spend many an unhappy hour looking disconsolately at that view.

Shortly after I settled down, Max bustled in with a dictating machine and several files. He opened the filing cabinet, popped several of the files onto my desk and gave me one to peruse. Each file contained a letter from the insurance company together with an accident report and an investigator’s report. I proceeded immediately to advise. Things were really beginning to look up.

One drawback was that neither Max nor Oscar had told me what they wanted of me, nor what I was required to do. As an advocate/ barrister in Ceylon, my advices were long and learned. I analyzed the facts in detail and wrote learned advices on the law when I was briefed to advise clients. I decided to follow my Ceylonese practice and provided the managers of these insurance companies with a comprehensive advice with regard to each file.

I was completely unaware that all the managers of these insurance companies wanted was to know whether they were liable to indemnify the insured, and what amount they had to pay. Neither Max nor Oscar told me that my advices were completely inappropriate to the extent that I was spending far too much time on each individual report. Instead, they tore my letters of advice to shreds. They even corrected my English in ways that were almost impossible to comprehend.

Let me give you an example of how pedantic these gentlemen were. On one occasion I had written: “The duty of an occupier to take care is …” The letter came back with my words scored off and replaced with the following words: “An occupier’s duty to take care is …”

I thought to myself, “Good God, I took Second-Class Honours in law at Cambridge, and had to come out to the colonies to have my English corrected!” This happened every day and my letters of advice came back completely mutilated so I had to rewrite them in my principal’s English. A few years later I showed these mutilated advices to my dear friend Louis Voumard QC and he was horrified.

But this was the least of my worries. Max treated me with contempt from the commencement of my employment. There was nothing racist in his treatment of me, for Max treated all his employees with contempt. He was a second-class bully (it would be insulting to call him a first-class bully). Many years later I was discussing my experiences of Max with a Queen’s Counsel at the Victorian Bar, who told me that when his son was employed under Max, he suffered a nervous breakdown and had to leave the firm.

On my first day at work when Max had brought me a dictating machine and files, I thanked him and called him “Max”. He remonstrated with me and informed me that I was just an employee in the firm and that I had to call him “Mr Williams”. A week later, I met him in the lavatory, got onto the little platform and stood beside him at the urinal. I looked down on him for he was only 5’4″ tall and said, “Mr Williams, I am sorry we haven’t had a chance to talk to each other.” He brushed past me muttering, “What is there to talk about?”

When I occasionally walked into a room to discuss a problem I had with a particular file, he would look disdainfully at me, pick up the telephone, swivel around in his chair, dial a telephone number and carry on a conversation with an unknown person for many minutes while I stood there looking up at the ceiling and counting the tiles. When he had finished, he would swivel around, glare at me and abuse me for disturbing him. This happened regularly and repeatedly; after some time my soul was completely battered and bruised, my confidence shattered and my mind in turmoil.

I was now at my wits end. I was too proud to go back to Ceylon and face the humiliation of having failed in Australia. My misery was compounded by the fact that I would go to the common room to have lunch every day, as I knew no one in the city of Melbourne. Occasionally, a vicious young employee solicitor would join us for lunch. He paid no heed to the fact that I was a stranger in a foreign land and needed to be treated with kindness and consideration. Whenever I joined in the conversation, he would make a point of humiliating and ridiculing me. I remember one occasion when I brought in some photographs of our tea plantation in Ceylon, this solicitor asked me where I had got these photographs from and why I was pretending to “skite over other people’s property.”

My only friend in the firm was Ian Robertson (now Judge Robertson). He had left the firm to go to the Victorian Bar and I had no one to turn to. I seriously contemplated taking my life, but I could not leave my dear sweet wife alone and friendless in Australia. I would look down at the people walking in Lonsdale Street. They seemed so happy and carefree. Did they know the turmoil in my heart and in my soul? I could not get another job: Eva Mahlab, who ran a legal employment agency and had obtained this job for me, bluntly told me that she could not find me any other employment.

I felt lost, I was desperate. In my hour of darkness I turned to valium. I started taking five mg at night in March 1972. By June I was taking another five mg at lunchtime. Looking back over the years, I cannot comprehend how I managed to drive to work and return-home driving down the South-Eastern Freeway, let alone do a day’s work. My wife was desperate. I had lost all interest in life. I would return home after work and sit in front of the television, staring blankly at the screen until it was time to have dinner and go to bed. The only pleasure I had in my life was at weekends when I could forget for a while about my employment.

One morning in the middle of September 1972, Oscar called me into his room. Max and Oscar had divided the bullying between them over the previous nine months, with each one unwittingly outdoing each other. Oscar smiled sarcastically and said, “Nimal, Max and I have been discussing your future in the firm. We have decided that you have no future in this firm. You are of no use to us because you have no brains.” This was a body blow. I sat there in a state of shock, fearing what was coming next. My sorry little world was about to disintegrate completely. He continued: “We realize that working in a firm doing defendants’ work is far too complicated for you. We thought you ought to join a firm doing personal injuries work for plaintiffs.” I looked down at the floor.

“Another alternative for you would be to go to the Victorian Bar. One of our articled clerks who was a complete fool went to the Bar and we heard that he is doing quite well. That may be your answer, for you don’t need any brains or ability to be a success at the Victorian Bar.” This was the last straw. I went back to my little cubicle, lay my head on my hands and burst out crying. Even 10 mg of valium a day was no help. I was lost, living in a foreign country with no one to turn to for help. That was the longest day of my life. I drove home as I usually did in a daze, but on this occasion I was completely shattered. I have no recollection of how I got home; all I can remember was cars flashing past me.

I drove into the garage. I could not get out of the car. My limbs were frozen. After some time, Anna Maria came to the garage to see why I had not come in. She opened the passenger door and got in. I fell into her arms sobbing and crying. Anna Maria had come from a little village in Northern Italy called Asolo. She had left school at the age of 15 to work, and had worked until we got married. I then told her that she would never have to work again as I would provide for her. Now when I told her what had happened, she said quite firmly that I had to go to the Victorian Bar.

I asked her sarcastically what she knew about the Victorian Bar. I told her that this was impossible, for no Australian solicitor would brief a coloured man. I asked her how we were going to manage. Where was the money to come from? I couldn’t get money out of Ceylon due to stringent exchange control regulations. She looked at me and smiled. She told me that every morning for some months, she had been walking along Glenferrie Road, Malvern to do her shopping. About a month before, she had met two Italian nuns. She heard them speaking in Italian and joined them in their conversation. They asked her whether she was working, to which she replied, “yes’ They then asked her whether she would like to work at the St Francis Xavier Cabrini Hospital as there was a vacancy for a cleaner, cleaning floors at the hospital. Anna Maria said yes, but she could only work part-time as she had to return home before her husband got home from work. She did not want him to know that she was working.

She had now been working for a few weeks as a cleaner at the hospital. The little extra money she earned from cleaning floors would come in useful for us. Anna Maria told me that she could now work-full time as a cleaner so that I could go to the Victorian Bar. She reminded me of the fact that I came from one of the great legal families in Ceylon and I had been on my way to the top of the legal profession in Ceylon before we left for Australia. She was the only one who had confidence that I would be a success at the Victorian Bar.

I went into the house, had a shower and felt like a new man. I telephoned several Ceylon-born solicitors in Australia who were practicing in Melbourne, including Ronnie de Kretser. Ronnie had been instrumental in helping me get my employment with Max as he was one of my referees. Every single Ceylon-born solicitor, without exception, cautioned me about going to the Bar, and advised me that no Australian solicitor would brief a coloured man. A few days after I made my decision to go to the Bar, I went to a friend’s son’s wedding. It was a Ceylonese affair. One cantankerous, nasty old Ceylonese-born solicitor, told the assembled guests that he had an announcement to make. In loud stentorian tones, he told the assembled gathering that I was going to the Victorian Bar and that there were easier ways of committing suicide. Great stuff, that.

The night after I made my decision, I threw my remaining valium pills in the bin. The next morning I strode into Oscar’s office and told him that I would take his advice and go to the Victorian Bar. One interesting feature of my employment was that during the nine months I had been there, I would be regularly called upon to contribute 20 cents for presents for employees who were leaving

the firm, even though I did not know any of them. I must apologize for this pettiness, but when I left, I did not receive a present, nor did Max and Oscar wish me well.I can now look back years later with considerable satisfaction. Although the early years were difficult, I am the author of Voumard: The Sale of Land, a work of recognized excellence in Australia, listed in the top twenty legal books in Australia. I am an authority on land law and a Queen’s Counsel. I was also appointed as a judge on the Court of Appeal in Fiji. I wonder what would have happened if I had not gone to the Victorian Bar?

My story has a happy ending. Supposedly it is Talleyrand who said, “Revenge is a dish best served cold” In 1986, I saw Oscar wandering around in Owen Dixon Chambers. He looked extremely sheepish when he saw me, for I was now a successful barrister. I had been invited to write a conveyancing manual and I took a leaf out of what Damon Runyan did when he wrote his first book: he dedicated it to his employer “who fired him with ambition”. I told Oscar that I was going to dedicate my work to Max “for firing me with ambition”.

I did write the conveyancing manual but certainly did not dedicate it to Max. I will be eternally grateful to Max and Oscar for giving me a helping hand to climb the rungs of the ladder of life in Australia.