The secret obsession of a Supreme Court Justice

What a human. On my throat. It's not just you and me. Australia's oldest library is crazy. Terrible paintings, old menus. Yeah. Is this history? Oh. I'm Annabelle Krab. Come and have a rummage through the story of us told by Search for the History or Hoarding Podcast on ABC Live. Or wherever you get your podcast. ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.

When George Palmer walked into university as a young man, he had dreams of becoming a renowned music composer, but it didn't feel like he belonged in the music department and he left after his first week. George ended up following one of his mates into studying law instead, and to his surprise he ended up loving the human side of the law. For the next forty five years he climbed the ranks from barrister to Queen's Counsel and finally to judge in the New South Wales Supreme Court.

But through all those years of his public life in the law, George had a secret. In every spare moment he would return to his piano, scribbling down choral works, piano pieces, orchestral scores. He harbored no ambition for his music to ever be performed or heard by anyone. He never spoke about composing with his colleagues or friends, or even really his family. Until one day George's talents were uncovered here at the ABC, almost by chance.

George Palmer is now one of Australia's preeminent living composers. His latest work is an operatic adaptation of Leah Purcell's The Drover's Wife. Hi George. Hi Sarah, it's a great pleasure to be here.

It's quite a journey, so let's start at the place it all began. Cairo in Egypt. How was it that you came to be born in Cairo? No, I wasn't actually born in Cairo. I was born in a tent in a desert. In Egypt? Okay. Cl close to Cairo somewhere. Well I'm um probably a couple of hundred kilometers away, in in literally in the desert, uh at a place called Moiska, which was Then a major British military hospital, which had been set up actually.

In the First World War, a lot of Australian soldiers in the First World War were stationed there, and it was the hospital where my parents came when I was ready to pop out into the world. What what were they doing in a military hospital tent in the Egyptian desert? Well, uh a dad was still in the British Army at that stage. Um he uh had risen to the rank of Major. My mum uh was in the military intelligence section, uh, throughout the war. and they met in Italy in the Italian campaign.

And then dad was posted back to the Palestine campaign. Mum came back to Egypt. They married and When it was time for me to arrive, the only place that I could arrive was the British Military Hospital on the edge of the desert. So I was literally born in a tent. Did your mum tell you much about what her role in the British intelligence was during the war? Ah, look, look, look, she wasn't a super spy. That's what they all say, George. That's true.

My mum actually knowing my mum she could well have been a femme fatale super spy. Uh what she said though was that she was in the intelligence gathering section uh because she spoke five languages fluently How was that? Why why did she speak so many? Well her father spoke French to her. Her mother spoke both Italian and Slovene because her mother was born on the border i between Italy and Slovenia back then.

Um and she was educated by German nuns in a German convent in Alexandria, so she spoke German flu fluently, and she was taught English. So she had those five languages which she spoke fluently, which m made her an ideal person for intelligence gathering from all the correspondence and messages that were going backwards and forwards, uh to and from prisoners of war.

And then your father being a a major in the in the British Army, does that mean he kind of fit that stereotype of a very stiff, upper lipped sort of fellow? Definitely, definitely not. No, no. Um Dad was a bit of a nonconformist like the rest of the family, I'm afraid. Um and although I'm sure he was very, very good at his his job, uh he was never part of the British establishment. Maybe he wasn't born into the establishment, he was born in Cyprus.

His father was Greek Cypriot. His mother was English. And they met when uh Dad's father, my grandfather, went to Edinburgh to study at Edinburgh University to study ph chemistry. They met there and married and then came back to Cyprus to live. where Dad was brought up uh in a household where he spoke Greek to his father and English to his mother because his m his mother refused to learn Greek.

Uh and uh that was not by any means an ideal conventional background for British military establishment.

So what was it that made your parents decide to leave that world and come out to Australia? Well, I Firstly They were sick of the war, as everybody was. And they could see that Europe was going to be a mess and it was going to be quite hard. My father did not have a university education. Uh the war hi his family was too poor to send him to university.

He worked in London before the war in banking in the banking industry, but the war interrupted that. So he had no qualifications and he certainly was not part of the establishment. And even though he ended up as a major in the British Army, that wouldn't have got him anywhere back in England.

So they were looking for some place where they could start a new life, bring up a family without also the inhibitions of class restriction I think probably my father was conscious of that, having worked in London coming from Cyprus. So they wanted somewhere where they could make a fresh start for the family in the new world. And so what sort of home did they find once they arrived in Australia? Where did you where did your family set up home?

Well, we arrived when I was three months old. As soon as I was born, they tried to arrange passage to own a ship. the first ship they could get on was to Australia. They arrived nineteen forty seven, not very much money at all. No job, no connections for my father. They had just a a little saved. You don't get paid very much in the British Army. They found A house they could rent, a little old house in Rosebury in Sydney, which was then quite an industrial suburb.

Um and I was vr I grew up there for the first four years of my life with my mother, father, my aunt. And my grandmother and my uncle. So the family lived together in this little house. And my grandmother, who had had a very comfortable life in Egypt. She had married a French engineer who was uh in charge of a big cotton mill in in Egypt. So they had a very comfortable life in Egypt. servants and the whole business. But when she came here she came with virtually nothing?

And she worked and had to work to help support the family. She worked in the local chewing gum factory. Which which was nearby in Rosebery. Hardly any English. She worked, you know, on the on the production line. Was she angry about that resentment? Not at all. My grandmother was a very strong and positive person and she made the best of everything. And I d remember the chewing gum factory so w well because I remember sitting on the doorstep of the house.

in the afternoons waiting for her to come home. We were very close, my grandma and my And she would arrive smelling of chewing gum. Of course! And she always managed to have a little packet of chewing gum for me. So my ma uh my grandma working in the the the production line in in the local Chewing gum factory, Wrigley's Chewing Gum, coming home, smelling of chewing gum, the little chewing gum treat, was a very vivid memory to me.

As you describe it, George, all the adults in your life had really had this huge disruption in your life, living through war, leaving their homelands, coming to this totally new place. What sort of environment did they manage to create for you and and your sister? Well Um they loved being here from the moment they arrived. We had wonderful next door neighbours in Rosebery, next door, typical like fifth generation Aussies.

who made the whole family feel very welcome. I was often there. Their teenage daughters would babysit me. Uh arriving there and finding Such wonderful people who were so welcoming. made them fall in love with the country and they never lost that love affair with with the country. So it it was a very warm and stable environment within the family, even though they had come from such fracturing experiences in their lives.

Do you remember the first time that you heard a piano? Oh yes. Yes, vividly. It was the next door neighbours. Their elder daughter was a fine pianist to even as a teenager. They had a grand piano. And I would go next door. And sit under the piano while she practised. So I had a lot of music happening in the Just a few inches above my head. And she was a very fine pianist too. Not just a an amantinkler, she went on to become a a musician and a a very well respected music teacher, piano teacher.

So I was from a very early stage in my life, from the age of, you know, basically months old, exposed to this wonderful music at very close quarters. So how did you go from being this little fella sitting under a piano to starting to learn to play one yourself? Well um I wanted to learn the piano from a very early age, but my parents firstly couldn't afford a piano. And secondly there was a perception back then

That piano wasn't really for boys, you know. A a well brought up young lady might learn the piano, but a boy should be out there kicking a football. It was. It was only when m my sister, who went to the con local convent school, was offered piano lessons that I renewed My assault on my pants. Can we please have a piano and could I learn also? So it was when they got a piano from my sister.

Um that I succeeded in also a r getting piano lessons from a wonderful d teacher who lived in the next street, and that was my introduction to learning the piano. And did it immediately feel like a kind of home for you, like a natural fit once you were playing? Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh

I never had to be forced to practice the piano. I had in fact to be dragged away from the piano. Go outside and play and kick a football or get out of the way. Stop making that racket. That was more more the order of the day.

As a young boy teenager in the fifties and sixties, was it just classical music that was in your field of um attention or were you into pop and rock as well? Look, um... Nineteen fifty five or fifty six I think, rock and roll burst on the scene. Bill Haley and the comments I remember. Rock around the clock. I remember it v vividly. Look, I I I I enjoyed that music. But I didn't want to play it.

And what I was constantly hearing in my head was classical music. And that's that's where my natural instincts lay. And what consolidated that? And entrenched that deeply. for me was when I finally persuaded my parents to buy a record player. We didn't have music in the phone. We had a radio of course when you had the usual pop songs coming under the radio, but I wanted more.

And and so I w went to work on my parents to buy a a record player, like I'd worked on them for the piano. Uh, and th they eventually bought one. And I started to buy the rec records of the music that I wanted to hear. And I would buy these little forty five RPM singles which you had back then, which cost less than probably a dollar, you know. And I would listen to that constantly and I started to build up a record collection

Uh, which became quite actually s substantial and large. And I would listen to that constantly, again to the annoyance of my parents, oh for goodness sake, we've had enough of Wagner Womb. Can you Give us some Bill Hurley, D. Just some little highly on the cars, like goodness right. So I uh you know, hearing the music really immersing yourself in this great classical tradition.

Were you also writing music? Because are they two very different things to hear the way music is created by these great masters and then thinking you're gonna give it a go as well? Yeah, well look, uh as soon as I started to learn the piano and learned musical notation I really wanted to start creating some of this myself. You know, if Beethoven can do it, why can't I do it? Well a very good reason, but I I didn't appreciate that that at the time. So from a very early stage

When I started to learn piano, I was beginning to scribble down little tunes, little make up little pieces and so on. And it was just a very natural thing for me to do. And I would sit at the piano also improvising. It was always in my head. Always in my head.

So given what a huge part music played in your life as uh as a young man, as a teenager, George, did you dream of making a career in music as soon as you finished school? Yes, yes, I did. I did. Um I felt that this was right for me, this was something that I c I could do. But I remember very vividly a conversation with my parents, uh, when I finished high school.

And we had the the results and fortunately I got a Commonwealth scholarship, meaning I could go to university.'Cause they'd said to me, You don't go to a Commonwealth Scholarship, you're not going to university. A we can't afford it. B that means you haven't worked hard enough. Okay. So we had this conversation in the back garden of our house I can remember. What do you want to do? said my dad. Well I would like to go and study composition.

And to my uh astonishment and to my parents' credit, they didn't poo poo the idea. They didn't say, Oh rubbish, go and get a day job. They approached it much more subtly. That that already survived your campaigns for the for the piano and the record player by now, George. They were on to you. They knew the direct attack was not going to be effective. Then y never say no to George, always approach it from the other direction.

So so Dad said, um, look, that's fine, that's fine, but you'll have to bear in mind that the life of a musician and particularly a composer is very precarious. Very precarious. And uh if you want to eventually have a family, mm be able to educate your children, provide for them, you're gonna find that very, very difficult. If you're a full time composer. But my father was perfectly correct in that.

And I think I s did appreciate that at the time. What well known composers were around in Australia in the nineteen sixties? And the few people I did know as musicians, I could see from them that it was in some cases a hand to mouth existence, going from one gig to another. So I thought seriously about that.

So I signed up for arts law because a mate of mine, my close friend from school, was going to do that. I thought well that's something I can do probably but For the first week or so on the campus I'll go in and sit in on the music composition classes, which I did, thinking if I really have a passion for this I can always change course. And what did you find when you sat in on those glasses?

I found Peter Skullthorpe, Australia's most preeminent, deservedly and internationally accla acclaimed composer there, lecturing in the music composition class. Now Peter Skullthorpe was then in his Indonesian mood or mode stage. I'm hearing the gamelan. Gamelan was everywhere. It was compulsory to learn the gamelan. And Gamelan had not been a major part of my experience up till then, I have to say, my musical experience.

That was Peter. And the other composers who whom I I won't mention my name were of the fingernails on blackboard screeching type music. No, that wasn't part of my experience either. So I had gamel music on the one hand.

Screeching fingernails on on on blackboard music on the other hand, and to cap it all One of the mate uh the lex senior lecturers there was very into recorder and medieval music and she established An annual runny mead festival scattering rushes all over the Great Hall of Sydney University and the whole of the music stud staff and students dressing up in tight red tights and colourful things and playing the r a recorder and ca capering around And this wasn't what you d wasn't what you dreamt of.

This was not my scene either. So I thought that's what the music department at the moment has got to offer and I don't think it's really me, any of it.

So it made it was easier to follow your father's sage advice at that point. And and focusing then on the law, that decision, George, was it as exciting to you as a a subject as as music had been? Hm. Well, I've got to be honest and say while I was going through law school, it was something that I just had to go through. Uh I didn't f I find it

mildly intellectually interesting, but not uh passionately uh engaging. It was only when I actually graduated and I started actually using the knowledge I had acquired and the skills I had acquired, dealing with real people, dealing with real problems, seeing how the system actually worked, rather than in the sort of vacuum of academia, that I really then became very engaged in it and quite passionate about it I have to me say. What was your area of expertise? It was commercial law, but

Um it sounds dull and and you know dry and m almost mercenary, but you're dealing with people. You're dealing with human beings who are flawed. Some are admirable, some are mercenary and despicable. They're all wanting to get something, do something.

And dealing with all of that was a very good illustration of how the machinery of society in dispute resolution works, how commerce works, how we deal with each other when A wants something that B has, B wants something from A. So it was an education in the human experience.

Your work continued in the Law George and you were made a Queen's Counsel and then a judge in the Supreme Court of New South Wales. That must have been a proud day for your family. Yes, well it was, bearing in mind that both my parents, with some justification, always feared that at any moment I would stuff everything up and make a complete fool of myself. And I say that. No, lovingly that they had complete justification in thinking so because I did it.

Well that you'd put your wig on backwards or something, or what did they think you'd do? Um but uh th they they were immensely proud. Uh immensely proud and uh I was v very, very happy that they were there to see it. You were put in charge of something called the protective list in the Supreme Court. What's that?

That is a traditional jurisdiction that the Supreme Court, every Supreme Court has. It's an inheritance from the English system when the church courts We're in charge this is from medieval times, we're in charge of protecting the weak and v vulnerable in society. That then later translated into a compartment of the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

Now it might be those who have uh a mental illness, those who are uh particularly vulnerable to undue influence or scams or it's also to do with having overall supervision of the adoption process. The Supreme Court has to approve every adoption.

Now there's a obviously a a a a process where that goes through many, many, many layers before it actually comes up for final approval, but As the judge, you have to make sure that all the procedures are followed and properly followed, and if there's anything that that catches your attention, something might not be right, something might be amiss. then you have to investigate and and find out.

And if an adoption is contested by the natural parent Ah then that case comes into the Supreme Court. And this is a very important jurisdiction because as you can imagine, there are quite a few cases where children are taken away. from a m a parent, often a single mother. And the mother is pr has probably been experiencing enormous difficulties in her life. Th there's a common pattern, unfortunately. Often the single mother has been abused as a child.

has a drug problem, or had an alcohol problem, And the child is born and the social workers in the hospital immediately say this mother is is not going to be able to look after this child properly, and so the system is alerted. So you can imagine how a mother who has been through that experience feels Being told you are not even fit to be the mother of your child, it is devastating.

And so some of them uh uh uh uh oppose the adoption. What usually happens is social workers take the child, the child is put into foster care. And at a certain stage... Often the foster parents apply for the adoption. At that stage the mother opposes. The child has been living with the foster parents perhaps f for years, for th five, six years. A close bond is formed with the cost foster parents. The mother has seen the child perhaps occasionally

But the mother cannot bring herself to consent to surrendering her child, and so she opposes. Now they they are some really heartrending cases to decide. Podcast and broadcast. George, you were describing your time in charge of the protective list, one of your duties as a Supreme Court judge in New South Wales, where you had ultimate responsibility for all adoptions in New South Wales.

What is it like to be in that position to have a kind of ultimate decision making power there? What's that like morally for you, emotionally? it's very difficult. Emotionally Um but you have to apply the law. And the law says that the of paramount interest, the paramount importance is the welfare of the child. while the natural mother might be grieving to the point of d dis you know destruction. You can't give her feelings priority.

Nor the feelings of the foster parents who have been attached to the child. So you have evidence from social workers, from psychologists, from any person that you feel can help you to make the right decision in the interest of the child. Would cases stay with you if you Oh yes, yes, absolutely. is uh a case of a young A girl who came to Australia as a refugee. She, as a child, had seen Her family killed the in front of her. She came to a refugee camp And shortly before she left. She was going.

Yeah. She was a tect and ripe. When she came to Australia, Her brother came with her. It was discovered then that she was pregnant. To be with child, even in the circumstances in which she was made pregnant, was a huge disgrace. She was virtually imprisoned by her brother. in the small unit where they lived, not allowed to come out. She escaped and went and fled to a a refuge. And she was taken to the hospital where she gave birth to the child.

She told the social workers there that she and the child would probably be killed. She was in a very, very distracted state, you can imagine, from her experiences. So the social workers stepped in. They took the little girl away. They put her with some frost appearance on And the mother had some psychiatric treatment, but she was struggling a lot. About four or five years later the foster carers applied for adoption and the mother opposed.

She said basically, this little girl is the only thing I've got in my life. After all she's been through. The foster parents were distraught as well. This is our girl, this is our child, you can't take her away. So what to do in the best interests of the child? I had evidence from social workers, psychiatrists and so on, and it was it was pretty clear that the mother was not not in a position where she could take care of the child.

Ah so I decided it was in the best interest of the child to let the adoption proceed. Uh to announce that in court. to the mother was a very difficult. And we were all in tears why Mm-hmm. My associate president is the court staff, but... A decision has to be made and you have to apply the law. So... You know, uh I I I think I can that I I made the best decision I could in the circumstances, as the Lord directed me to do in the interests of the child.

It caused extreme grief to so many people. But that's the your responsibility at that stage. The decision ends with you. You take the responsibility for it.

I was dealing with commercial cases most of the time. That's important in its way, disputes have to be resolved, but dealing with commercial These real human issues and and and and And seeing how we have established principles in our community to deal with these problems and that they have to be applied fairly and properly, that I regarded as the most important part of my work.

In these years, George, of building your career in the law, what place did music have in your life? It was um Very much uh on the side, under the covers as it were. I mean y the the law is very demanding, both when the you're a barrister and when you're a judge you Have to make that your priority. And then of course my family, a growing family, I have three kids. Um so there wasn't much time to indulge in my secret passion, but what time I did get for that, uh I used I used to sit at the piano.

scribble down whatever I was writing, and shoved the music in the bottom drawer, thinking, well that's never gonna be seen or heard by anybody. Did you have some secret secret deep dark buried ambition that it would be one day? No, I I I never honestly never thought that it would ever come to light. Um I didn't plan for it. I was not within the musical milieu. So it was something that took me outside the law. It was an escape from the law.

For example, you know, I'd go in on the train in the morning and I wouldn't be reading my notes for the cases. I I'd done that preparation already. I would be reading scores or or uh books on or orchestration or composition or whatever I was reading. Uh that would be music and ditto on the way home. Um w work was for work the workplace and outside the workplace in when I had a s some spare time it was music. And I think moving between those two very, very different worlds

Help me keep some sort of balance and sanity, I've got to say. So there's a lot of life that happens outside the courtroom which is a surprise to some lawyers, I have to say.

Then a a few things happened in your life to change the the role that music had in it. Firstly was the fact that one day you were driving in your car listening to music, as always. And suddenly a a speaker stopped working. Yes. I I kept on banging the speaker on my right hand side saying, What's wrong with the wretched thing?

Uh I took the car in to uh to be serviced and I said, Look, that speaker is not working and the technician said, It's working perfectly fine. What is not working is your hearing mate. So that's when I first discovered that I was losing losing my hearing. And and what sort of prognosis were you given medically about your hearing? Well, I went in obviously, uh saw the specialist and he said, Uh well this thing happens, this sort of thing happens. We can't really predict.

Um it could be a gradual loss of hearing over the years, or it could be sudden, because what happened with the speaker in the car was pretty sudden. One minute it was working perfectly and the next day it wasn't, so which is why I thought it was busted. So he said, Look, we just have to wait and see. En dan... Tell me about George, what happened with your with your father when you faced losing him. How did that inspire you to to to take your music out of the bottom draw.

Okay. Well uh d Dad and the whole family knew that George's mad pastime was scribbling music. Okay. He he knew I was deeply involved in it. He wasn't well. getting sick and he wouldn't, I knew, be able to go out and hear music if I got even a small group to perform it somewhere. So I got the idea that I would uh get a few musicians together

and record something, a little piece for him, so that I could just you know take it home to him and play it to him. That So, uh I did know a few musicians then I said, Can we get uh uh some people together and we'll go into a little recording studio and just put something down. Um and my mate said, Look, you should go to the A B C because in their downtime they will they let out their recording studios quite cheaply.

That was a good idea, I thought, so we we got together some fine m musicians and we went into the recording studio, the ABC studios in Altimo. And the sound engineer, ABC sound engineer who was assigned to this crazy little project was the chief engineer for the s classical department in in it's uh a a wonderful man called Yossi Gabay. And so Yossi did the did the recording and so on, then unbeknown to me He went late and he spoke to some people in the ABC and said, you know, you should...

Listen to this weird guy. Yeah. He said it's it's not bad. You mean you should actually listen to this and so you know, this judge who writes music. And so They listened and it came together and the ABC said... This would make a good Australian story. Did you think twice before agreeing? I mean it's a it's a big thing to have a a documentary made about it.

I I I did think very very seriously about it because at that stage I was a judge of the court and it that's not a good look if You know, one of the judges has got egg all over his face and people burst out laughing every time they come into his courtroom, so I went and asked the Chief Justice, James Spiegelman.

And I said, Look, this proposal's been put to me. It's you know, the the public profile of judges is a matter of importance to the court, so what do you think? He said, Go for it. Absolutely go for it. So I did. I took the risk. I had no idea whether it would be a disaster or a success. Fortunately it was the latter. The the whole impetus for that first recording though of course was to make this music to let your dad hear what you'd been working on. How did that play out?

Well it didn't play out well unfortunately because what happened was that after we finished doing the recording, Yossi Gabe the engineer was going to do the mix, editing and so on. And he came to me one day and he said, Look, I've just been diagnosed with a brain tumour. Oh God. I've got to go into hospital. I've got a uh surgery. I hope it'll be all ca okay. Um I should know in about six weeks or seven weeks' time.

Uh please feel free to get somebody else to mix it. I said, Look, Yossi, um I I I want you to do it. You know, we'd become friends by then. He was terrific as a as an engineer. I said, Well wait, I will wait. And we waited, but unfortunately Yossi took a lot longer to recover. And unfortunately in that time my dad died, so I didn't get to play it to him. So that was sad.

For you, George, when you first had the experience of hearing your music performed by actual musicians, what was that like? Oh terrible. Terrible. Look I'll tell you terrible. The very first time I heard my music performed was in this recording studio with about ten or fifteen really top musicians, mostly opera Australian and ballet people. And we didn't have a conductor. I thought, Oh, okay, I'll I'll conduct. I know how it should go.

And I was up there waggling the stick and stop, stop Cellos and Violas, you're playing out of tune. No we're not Yes you are. Look, let's do it again. Dada da. Now it's the vi violins on on on my left hand side, they're out of tune. What was happening? It was the hearing distortion of my hearing. that everything sounds out of tune to me because there's this peculiarity in the in the little vibrations of the

Little hairs in in the ear which are tuned to specific pitches, and more than one of them is vibr uh vibrating at any time so everything sounds out of tune. So I was thinking to myself, This is awful. Fortunately a mate of mine who was the leader of the wild end section said, Look, it's all fine, just let me conduct. The problem is your ear, not your music.

That's the problem is your ears, not your music. So he conducted and it was fine. But that's when I discovered that listening to my own music was actually torture. George, so for a composer not to be able to hear his own music is an awful fate. I mean, could you take some comfort from how other people were reacting to your music? But you see the the the the the the difficulty with any creative person

is when you are complimented on what you do by those who are close to you, oh that's lovely, dear, oh that's wonderful. Uh you know, or who owe you some obligation, you feel they're just being nice. It's when total strangers who owe nothing to you. come up and say that's wonderful, etcetera, you feel okay, it must be okay. So I I still have not got over the experience when I listen to my music, even though I know it's been

played by brilliant musicians. I know what it should sound like. I know in my head what it should sound like. I know from the written page what it should sound like. But what I actually hear with my ears is horrible. I can't enjoy it.

You kind of had the sense that that Australian story might change things for you. How did it end up changing things musically in terms of the the opportunities that you had or or requests that came your way? Well uh it's interesting because the producer of the Australian story program said said to me before you decide to do this Just be aware that this will change your life. Practically everybody who's done an Australian story says the same things, changes your life. And it did for me too.

it it sort of outed me as a composer and people started to ask to ask me to write music, to commission me to write music. A an opera singer, a former opera singer, came to me and said, You would be the perfect person to form a board of a company, a not for profit company, for the encouragement and development of young opera singers, which I I did, Pacific Opera. So it it all started to take off. And you were still, you know, filling your little day job as a judge at the same time?

Absolutely. So it means I'd I've had a very busy day because you know, I was getting up very in early in the morning to write some music. Then I was Going off to do some rigorous exercise, going into court, doing the full day's work, working after hours to write judgments, then coming home. d d dealing with a family's issues such as, Will you tell those kids to get to bed or you know, that sort of stuff and then writing some music later on. It was a pretty uh full on time.

One of the commissions you were given, George, was in two thousand and eight asked to compose a mass for Pope Benedict's visit to Australia. Were masses something you were familiar with? Of course I was brought up a Catholic. And the liturgical music of the church is very, very familiar to me, so and I'd previously written a a an o a mass. I'd been a commissioned to write a mass for for Christmas.

um which was recorded by the A B C amongst other recordings that they did of my music. So uh re writing a a uh a mass was not completely new experience for me, but this was on a huge scale. This is a paper mass. What sort of brief were you given? a very contentious uh issue. The directive came from Rome There has to be as much Latin in the Mass as possible. Now, this is from Benedict Benedict, the Pope who is conservative. Now, we had had ever since nineteen sixty five the liturgy in English.

And there were very many, many people in the church who w did not want to see the reintroduction of Latin because that signalled I returned to stricter control from Rome. Sorry. This is a tricky position for a composer. It will I would imagine. It was. And as I discovered Familiar phrases sancta sancta sanct or so phrases that would be familiar to a lot of people, but I didn't said whole prayers in Latin.

But then I was told, Go out to the parishes and do a roadshow and sell this mass because we want the parish version to be sung in the parish churches. So I went out and I had a few conversations and the first one with the parish priest in the northern suburbs of Sydney did not go well. He said This mass will be sung in my church over my dead body. It couldn't have been. Clear up. More he said, I said, Oh why? He said, Latin. They wanna rope us back in to Rome. They wanna

Iron collar round our neck, no way. And he was not alone in saying that. I spoke to two or three others and the sa and had the same result. And then I went back to the di diocese and I said to the Archbishop I I'm sorry. They're not buying it. Well what happened on the day your mass was performed in front of the Pope and around three hundred and fifty thousand people at Randwick Rose Course?

That there was a huge choir f made up from all the parish choirs and so on. It all went very well. A lot of people came along, they did sing along to it. Because most of it is in English, so they sang along to it. But it was just very interesting to see how the introduction of Latin into the liturgy, even th just the thinnest wedge in the door, was seen as a threat to the independence Of the clergy.

What led you to finally deciding to retire from the law and focus on this music full time? Well you see after the the the papal mass I thought, Well where am I going to go from here? What could be bigger than that? Yeah. I thought on opera, obviously. Uh so I was uh I was gonna say foolish enough, foolhardy enough. to think of approaching Tim Winton and his agent for the rights to do Cloud Street as an opera. Fantastic novel, quintessentially Australian. I really wanted to do Australian work.

Quintessentially Australian, so why an opera? Because we need to tell Australian stories in our opera. Opera is the most powerful vehicle for telling a good story That I know of because if done right, if done well, it combines the emotional force and signals of music with the drama. It reinforces the drama if it's done properly.

And I wanted to tell these Australian stories as forcefully, as imaginatively, vividly as possible. And I wanted them absolutely wanted them to be Australian. We know We've got terrific Italian and French and German and everything else opera. Do we have enough terrific Australian opera? It's about time we started. So that's why I I thought of Cloud Street, and it's a sort of book that you'd never expect to be turned into an opera. It's full of vernacular.

I d I c I there are some lines in it that I can't repeat on l on live radio. But they are vividly four letter words. And and and that should be in opera if you're telling that story. That that story of Tim Winston's is so honest. It's why we It the real characters, real people dealing with the depths of of human emotion. And that's what I wanted to convey.

So with that opportunity to turn Tim Winton's Cloud Street into an opera, you decided it was time to retire as a judge and devote yourself to music.

How did you find the subject for your new opera, George? Well again I was looking for an Australian story, a powerful Australian story. And then one day... Walked into our bedroom at home and there on my wife's bedside table was the novel The Drover's Wife, and I remembered that in twenty sixteen we had seen that at the Belvoir and how powerful a play it was. And I and it was so tight.

And and yet so dramatic and you couldn't get more Australian. And I thought that is I thought that is the perfect text. So that's when I decided to approach Leah Purcell? Well, how did she respond? What did she think about this idea? Wow. I uh um I got in touch with uh husband Bain, who runs the uh the company, and I said I wanna this is what I wanna do and he said he said sent me a text, um Look, we're very busy at the moment filming. We've got our heads uh too full of other stuff.

Um, we'll get back to you. And I thought, Okay, that's a polite way of saying get lost and to my surprise, uh literally about uh fifteen months later, Bane gets in touch with me and he says, About that opera. Would you like to discuss it? So we got together for a cup of coffee, Bane and Leah and I, and literally within about five minutes we'd clicked immensely, we were ravingly enthusiastic. Yes, let's do it. It Liga said it'll be my first opera. I said, and it'll be your greatest opera.

Are you in this lead up to its premiere nervous or or excited or a a mix of both? Nervous and excited. Nervous because look, this is Shobi's You know, it can look terrific some and that somehow or other

Some little piece of the jigzable parcel is missing, you don't see it and you know, it doesn't work properly. It's a common experience. So that's why. Everybody should be nervous. If you're not nervous you're not trying hard enough. Okay. Excited because When I see that cast and those dances and the hear the orchestra who

So many people putting so much talent, energy, and enthusiasm into it. The excitement is is is exhilarating. This excitement communicates itself to you. So that's why I'm excited.

As you say, George, you had forty five years. You gave forty five years of your life to the law. Do you wish that there was forty five more years left to give to writing music, opera? In a sense yes. Yes, yes, because I I I haven't finished With all the ideas that I have. I haven't finished saying the things that I would like to say.

But you know we all got a lot of lifespan, haven't we? You've got to be realistic. You do what you can. As long as you can, as long as I'm capable, I will keep doing it. George, it's been absolutely fascinating to meet you. Thank you so much for being my guest on Conversations. It's it's been a great pleasure, Sarah. Very great pleasure. Broadcast. George Palmer's new option. Premieres at Q. Back in Brisbane and then heads to the Sydney Opera House in August.

This story was produced by Maggie Morris, herself a fellow survivor of the Gamelan. It was recorded on the lands of the Taribal and Yagara peoples. Our executive producer is Eliza Kirsch. I'm Sarah Kanoski. Thanks for listening. For more conversations Head to ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.