The Bar Common Room of the Queensland Barristers’ Association was packed on a recent evening (June 9). Over 120 of Queensland’s judges and barristers gathered to celebrate the launch of High Court Judge Ian Callinan’s fifth novel, 'After the Monsoon' (published by CQU Press).

The audience included Chief Justice Paul de Jersey and former Defence Minister Sir James Killen and Lady Killen. It also included the writers from the Queensland Crimewriters Club: Justice Callinan regularly contributes short stories to their annual anthology.

MC Professor David Myers reminded the audience that they had been meeting at Inns of Court to launch Justice Callinan’s novels since 1995, when Sir James Killen launched 'The Lawyer and the Libertine'.

He said that ever since then CQU Press had been running at top speed in publishing and promoting in order just to keep pace with Justice Callinan’s prodigious output. He said, “The big advantage that the Judge has over the heavily romanticised and now anachronistic image of the otherworldly artist starving in the garret is that his years of work as senior barrister and judge had taken him well outside himself into the world of boards of directors, big business, merchant banking, politics, film and art and that he had been able to draw his many, memorable characters from first hand experience in these spheres of action.” .

Myers concluded by saying “if the Judge keeps up this punishing pace with his novels, he will end up with such a collection of novels that he will bid fair to becoming known as ‘the Balzac of Brisbane’.

The guest of honour, the much decorated Major-General Digger James, was given a very warm welcome by the audience. In the course of his long career, General James held such positions as the Director-General of Army Health Services 1982-86, National President of the RSL 1993-97, Chairman of the National Advisory Committee to the Minister on Veteran’s Affairs 1990-92 and Patron of the International Society for Prosthetics since 1992. He focused in his launching speech on the dramatic turning point of 'After the Monsoon', namely the heroic charges of the Australian Light Horse in the Middle East from 1915-1918, as they vied with Lawrence of Arabia in the Palestinian campaign stretching from the famous cavalry attack at Beersheba to the triumphant entry into Damascus.

General James also praised 'After the Monsoon' as a deeply moving tragic saga with a unique and authentic representation of the Australian character and the Australian lifestyle in the era between pre-WW1 to the Japanese airforce attacks on Broome in WW2. He said that Justice Callinan had written a true epic of war, pearling, international business and all the adventure that life has to offer. He presented the reader with a cavalcade of fascinating characters, jockeys, ballet dancers, English repertory actors, hardened ruthless pearlers, the fearless Japanese divers, lighthorsemen, businessmen, lawyers, farmers and sailors. The canvas covered the Tweed Valley, Brisbane, Palestine, Thursday Island, Broome, Perth, London, Birmingham, Penang, New Guinea and the South Pacific.

There is no other Australian author writing today covering such a vast field of place, activity and character and providing such keen insights into what it means to have been an Australian living in the twentieth century. And, like all of Callinan's novels, this one has the impact of a thunderclap in its dramatic climax.

Justice Callinan generously thanked his CQU Press editor for the last 10 years, Professor Myers, and said he enjoyed their many linguistic jousts. He hinted that his next literary work might deal with the Japanese war crimes tribunal at the end of WW2. Justice Callinan has already been extensively interviewed on ABC Radio in Brisbane and in Canberra and will be featured in the next issue of the ABC Magazine Limelight.

Photo (above): Major-General Digger James, AC, AO (mil), MBE, MC OstJ, with Justice Ian Callinan AC.

Photo (left): CQU Press publisher Professor David Myers AM with Major-General James and Mrs James.