Shepparton's Kaz Gurney has lived many lives — husband and father, scientist, farmer, park ranger, milk bar owner, lawyer. But her most fulfilling, and perhaps her most courageous role, has been her life as a woman. John Lewis talked to the Goulburn Valley Community Legal Centre manager before she retires after eight years with the Shepparton-based service.
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When she's not navigating the clogged corridors of justice, there's nothing Kaz Gurney likes better than to cruise the open skies in her Auster World War II observation plane.
“It's freedom. It's a lovely experience,” she says.
The 76-year-old has had a pilot's licence for 45 years and regularly flies to Bourke.
“They're running a fantastic justice reinvestment program up there — very effective. They've reduced Aboriginal offending by over 25 per cent,” she says.
There was also a time when the tall, silver-haired lawyer used a plane to muster cattle.
But that was another life.
For the past eight years Kaz Gurney has spent her time helping the marginalised and the vulnerable in our community. People embroiled in family violence, battling workplace or accommodation inequity or who have mental or physical barriers to moving forward with their lives are given access to free legal advice through the not-for-profit Goulburn Valley Community Legal Service, which she manages.
“I don't know what it's like to be an Aboriginal person or a person of colour. I don't know what it's like to have an intellectual disability, or a physical disability. But I do know what it's like to be different, and to be recognised as different,” she says.
Kaz Gurney was born in East Ivanhoe to a shopkeeper father and stay-at-home mum.
She spent her childhood along the old Boulevard and Banksia St, milking cows and keeping ponies at a time when nearby Bulleen was orchards and farmland.
She studied chemistry at Swinburne University, married young and worked for pharmaceutical giant Glaxo for 10 years as an industrial chemist.
With a wife and three children, Kaz felt the pull of rural life and bought a small farm near Yarra Glen running horses and cattle.
The dream of a life on the land grew stronger.
“I decided it would be a really good idea to buy a cattle station in the northwest of WA — 380km north-east of Carnarvon. There were no phones, only a radio; it was very isolated,” she says.
Eventually, drought and isolation forced the family back to Victoria where Kaz continued to fill her life with a bewildering variety of challenges.
She managed a cattle property at Gooram, ran a general store at Euroa, completed a degree in Biology and Natural Resources and joined Parks Fisheries and Wildlife as a ranger, worked in indigenous affairs and then with archaeologists and Heritage Victoria diving shipwrecks along the Victorian coast.
It was during her time with fisheries and wildlife that she became interested in the law — and began prosecuting matters in court for the department.
Then things fell apart.
“I became very unwell and I had a massive breakdown. A lot of issues came to the fore,” Kaz says.
“I had spent my life up until then doing all the macho things — hunting, shooting, fishing. The breakdown proved whatever I was feeling wasn't right. Once it started, I couldn't stop.”
Her marriage disintegrated and she lived with her parents on a small property at St Andrews while she pulled her life back together — which involved living as a woman.
“I had to start again. Everything I had went to my previous partner, so I started off with absolutely nothing. I learned what it was like to live on a disability support pension,” she says.
As well as refocusing her life as a woman, Kaz began studying law — eventually gaining an honours degree from Deakin University.
Her thesis, which won the Supreme Court Exhibition Prize and went on to be published in the prestigous American Journal of Law and Medicine, tackled the sensitive subject of informed consent for intersex medical operations.
“I talked about the importance of informed consent, and that doctors should have to put forward a proof to a court before they can operate. These days it doesn't happen to the same extent that it used to — there have been significant changes,” she says.
After working as a criminal lawyer for the Fitzroy Legal Service and the Neighbourhood Justice Centre, Kaz moved to Shepparton in 2012 to join the newly formed community legal centre.
She says her move to a country town has been enriching, on a professional and personal level.
“I've made some wonderful friends here. I've been very privileged to get to know members of the judiciary, the legal profession, but also so many different people in the community. People here have been really kind and accepting. I very seldom think about my difference,” she says.
Nevertheless, once Kaz retires in July she plans to sell her Kialla home and move to a small property on the Gippsland Lakes.
“I'm going to live a quiet life with my dog and go fishing. But, you know, it feels pretty odd to be leaving the CLC sector — and it's really important to continue using our brains. So I think I might be doing a little more than just fishing,” she says.
