12th Anniversary of Hon David Tonge's death

Today is the 12th anniversary of Hon David Tonge's death, a judge of the Family Court of Australia during the time of the family court bombings, the perpetrator, recently, finally being jailed, after 30 years, for his many crimes. When friends, colleagues and I were junior lawyers, David was the wisest and kindest pupil master: he gave us all as much time as we needed, taking the time to train us properly without making one feel shredded by humiliating and condescending feedback, which alas was the way of too many large law firm partners back in the day. I still regularly ask him for his opinion when I have a vexing ethical or legal question to address saying to myself: what would David recommend?

I suspect young lawyers today are not accorded the privilege of such caring, learned and careful legal training. He himself had wonderful legal training as an associate of High Court judge, Justice Victor Windeyer, whom David said was equally as kind, attentive and willing to share his knowledge and wisdom, when David was a new lawyer. Like me, David came to the law later, he after being an officer in the Australian Army. David had a collection of hilarious sayings also now disappearing from the language, a few of which I will share so we can all smile when we think of David today and remember what a lovely man he was, as everyone without fail, would say:

Up at sparrow’s fart

Trod on a frog (farted)

Do you have any more snakes in your bag (to clients who made a practice of withholding important information)?

Between a rock and a hard place

He couldn’t organise a root in a brothel

He couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag

Don’t let the bastards get you down

Some days are like diamonds and some days are like stones

Her softest feature was the enamel on her teeth

Have you ever heard of an efficacious case of the shits?

A blue-ribbon arsehole

As mean as cat shit

I’ve got a mind like a can of worms

I need to grab my brains

You need a real head kicker, a lawyer with a bit of mongrel in him (for client's facing an impossible opponent)