To date Australia’s only female Prime Minister, serving from 2010 to 2013, Julia Gillard began her Arts and Law degrees at the University of Adelaide.
The Hon. Julia Gillard AC was born in Wales and moved with her family to Adelaide in 1966. She went to Mitcham Demonstration School and Unley High School.
She moved to Melbourne in 1983 after being elected national Education Vice-President of The Australian Union of Students. After her time in office with the student union she completed her degrees at the University of Melbourne.
After graduating as a lawyer, she worked with Slater and Gordon, becoming a partner at just 29 years of age in 1990.
After her service as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has remained active in public and academic life, especially known for promoting woman’s access to leadership positions.
Judges are usually painted with unquestioning reverence.
Arthur Boyd’s whirls of thick oil slapped on with trowel and bare hand depict one judge in a floral dress, another in yellow on crutches pointing at a prostrate Chinese ‘coolie’, and yet another on fire. Many of the twelve paintings in ‘The Judges’ series draw crude attention to the masculine gender.
In being exposed and far from their lofty benches the judges become vulnerable, like those who appear before them.
The University of Adelaide commissioned Arthur Boyd in 1967 to produce a ceramic mural for the relatively new Napier building. Instead he offered ‘The Judges’ series and they arrived from his London studio in time to be exhibited at the Festival of Arts in 1968.
Over half a century later the paintings continue to challenge and shock and are among the University’s most treasured works of art.
The Don Dunstan Foundation was established in 1999 to continue the life’s aim of Don Dunstan for a fairer society.
Don Dunstan (1926-1999) studied law at the University of Adelaide and graduated in 1948. He was also a boarder at St Mark’s College where a Master noted him as a ‘utopian socialist’.
He founded a legal practice in Norwood in 1951 and in 1953 won the State seat of Norwood. The same year he co-founded Meals On Wheels.
As Attorney-General in 1965 he appointed Roma Mitchell as Australia’s first Supreme Court judge, ended discrimination based on race or country of origin, and Australia’s and introduced Aboriginal land rights.
His term as South Australian premier during the 1970s led national reforms in equal opportunities, Aboriginal recognition, consumer rights, electoral reforms, town planning, environmental protections and the Arts.
Light freely streamed in through the studio’s full-length west-facing windows that looked out onto a large open space of lawn and garden beds. An exercise book sat on a shelf with handy suggestions from past visitors for where to shop and find a coffee. There were nine boulangeries within a five-minute walk. The kitchen was fully equipped and the cupboards full of non-perishable cooking ingredients. Books lined the shelves, many were by a publisher I was to become familiar with, La Petite Maison. Reading Jean-Paul’s Amours de rencontres, I began to learn about his and Monique’s time in Newcastle and Melbourne in the mid-1970’s, their discovery of Australian literature and culture, their daughter Guibourg and the busy cultural hub they had established so Australians and French could meet.
That first stay I also got a firsthand extended experience of the longest transport strike since 1968. All the métro lines and all the buses stopped running for six weeks. I ended up stocking up on snacks and water and walking all the way into the centre of Paris every second day to find the libraries and archives I needed. It was zero, freezing, but always welcoming to return to the warm studio with its underfloor heating.
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