2023 UNE Distinguished Alumni Award winner - Ms Virginia Lydiard
In recognition of her inspiring career in education, law and arts, and for serving as a role model to women
The parallels between working as a prosecutor and a painter are not, at first, apparent. But there’s a spontaneity, creativity and magic to both roles, according to UNE Distinguished Alumna Virginia Lydiard.
“When you’re a prosecutor, you’re given a case, you get all your material and prepare it all perfectly, but once you go into court you have no idea how it’s all going to go,” Virginia said in an interview to accompany her first solo exhibition. “Art is the same. You have all these marvellous ideas, you have the canvas, you have the paints and yet you have no idea how it’ll turn out.”
A little like Virginia’s unconventional life.
First there was a brief foray into nursing, having “carried the Nightingale lamp from the age of five”, followed by a Bachelor of Arts degree at UNE in the 1960s, marriage and three children, and secondary teaching, despite having no formal teacher training. Then came an esteemed law career and, in more recent years, a thoughtful interrogation of the practice of art.
“I have been a risk taker all my life,” says the former Mary White College resident. “I have followed my instinct, stepping through whatever doors opened.”
Tradition or gender expectations have rarely been an obstacle. When Virginia graduated from the University of NSW with a Bachelor of Laws in 1983, by then a single mother, she sidestepped the usual trajectory of first becoming a solicitor to be admitted straight to the Bar. As the first woman member of the 16th floor Wardell Chambers Virginia signalled her preparedness to challenge norms. What’s more, she encouraged the many women who came after her.
“There were relatively few women at the Bar at that time, and some chambers simply would not take a woman on their floor. I was not totally oblivious to the difficulties I would face, but I really didn’t have much choice,” Virginia says. “I had to be available to my children for school holidays and I wouldn’t have had that freedom and flexibility as a solicitor. I was lucky to be welcomed but I was very conscious of the inequity that existed for other women.”
Being elected to the Bar Council on a number of occasions and serving on its Professional Conduct and Equal Opportunity committees gave Virginia opportunities to enact change. And in her subsequent role as the Crown Prosecutor, she became a significant role model and support to women with dreams of their own to practice law. For many years she taught Bar Practice courses.
“There is something about country children who attended UNE that encouraged us to believe we could change our world,” said Wendy McCarthy AO, who nominated Virginia for the alumni award. “Virginia’s work at the Bar Council became very important in changing the rules, in establishing voluntary mentoring for female barristers, and piloting an emergency child-care scheme in 2003 that became the permanent scheme we have today. She demonstrated significant leadership in pushing the boundaries for women in law and wanted others to have the same opportunities she did.”
The 18 years Virginia spent as a Crown Prosecutor were, she says, “extraordinary”. “I did a lot of crime from the word go and started working for the Department of Public Prosecutions, which was the most amazing training ground. I used to do a lot of country work and did some amazing cases and appellant work [appearing in matters heard in the District, Supreme and High courts].
“One sees an incredible range of bad behaviour coming before the courts but even in some of the worst cases you sometimes see in the accused something that makes you think if only they had been given another opportunity. It taught me that not all people who are charged with criminal offences are necessarily bad people.”
To keep her mind focused during intense cross examinations Virginia would routinely doodle.
“I drew faces and trees and houses; it was a means of not being distracted by any outside thoughts. With court work and art, it is the unknown that is similar. The outcome depends on so many factors … it evolves before you. There is nothing for it but to follow the line.”
After retiring from the Office of the Department of Public Practice in 2018, at the age of 75, Virginia again challenged convention by enrolling to study at the National Arts School. “By 2002 Virginia had a Bachelor of Fine Arts, in painting,” Wendy says. “This move in her later years is a sign of pushing our culture, which assumes women will not be still learning and working at 80.”
And throughout a career as eclectic as hers, Virginia’s original study of Arts at UNE (including history, psychology and philosophy subjects) has proven “enormously useful”. “It was a great determiner in how my life worked out, because without that degree I would have been unable to study law, initially Legal Studies by correspondence and later the Graduate Law Course at the University of NSW,” Virginia says.
Today’s artistic works are largely inspired by her love of nature and hark back to a country childhood filled with painting and drawing. They, too, provide opportunities to explore unchartered territory.
“You have to give over to the process of art,” Virginia says. “If you want to call yourself an artist, you are taking a risk because you are exposing yourself to a whole lot of judgements that could be adverse or complementary to you.
“At first I experienced imposter syndrome, but I’ve had to get over questioning myself. If you were to let it get on top of you, you would pull the pin and never do it.”
Like the most demanding court case, art draws on Virginia’s capacity for intense and prolonged focus. “Every line sings its own song. You just have to follow them, and the composition comes,” she says.
