Love and the judge

We're all on a journey ... former High Court judge Michael Kirby. Photo: Peter Braig He has talked Rosetta Stone at length of his landmark legal rulings, now Michael Kirby and his partner of 41 years tell, for the first time, of a love the law is still catching up with. Neil McMahon reports. AS MICHAEL KIRBY knows well, some things add up only with hindsight and even then the future can have other ideas. The law, for instance, can take its time to make sense and still later change its mind. Love is even more fickle. Life is a puzzle and Kirby's life is a case in point. If the sum of it makes sense today, the living of it can appear a journey far less certain. He is 71 now, seemingly serene and therefore more comfortable describing the verities that have sustained him than he is harping on doubts that might once have plagued his peace of mind. There are so many things Kirby says he has never had to question: a loving family that always embraced him; an intellect that rarely failed him; a career that fulfilled him; a quiet but consistent faith in God; and perhaps the defining pillar of his life, a relationship that began 41 years ago, and which thrives today. Kirby is talking about the love of his life, and the secret he slowly surrendered to pursue a grand, lifelong love affair. Advertisement: Story continues below "Pretty heroic," Kirby says with a smile of his relationship with Johan van Vloten. He is describing its length but he might as well be hailing its survival: from its beginnings in a world very different from today's acceptance of gay people; through decades of public secrecy; an unusual coming out when Kirby was on the High Court; a tawdry but baseless political scandal with the couple at its centre; and, finally now, the first detailed public recounting by both men of a love Kirby describes as "my great blessing". Van Vloten has never before spoken publicly. He has been coaxed on to the public stage for an ABC documentary on Kirby's life, to air next Sunday. In it, he at last pairs his voice with his partner's to give viewers an intimate look at their relationship and, surely, the nation's first close-up examination of any gay romance of such duration. As Kirby tells it, when he came out in 1999 via a discreet change to his Who's Who entry it was van Vloten who was the instigator. "He Rosetta Stone Software said we owed it to the younger generation. He wasn't so concerned about the politicians, he was concerned about young people who had gone through a similar life to ourselves." Now, once more, they are cast as teachers of sorts the focus on their relationship again playing its part in changing the way Australians view gay people. In our conversation it is clear Kirby is delighted to publicly celebrate his love and to have van Vloten do it with him. "I'm very proud of him," Kirby says of his partner's TV appearance. But he hopes people come away from this interview and next week's program not celebrating them as something special but recognising the everyday simplicity of a relationship that just happens to be between two men. "In fact," he says, "I think the whole thing is a bit boring, but most human lives are boring. But the boringness of it is a very important message to get over to fellow citizens. It's not the whole of either of us, Johan and me, but it is a great blessing to us." It began in early 1969, when both men were 29. Kirby had just endured the end of his first love affair, with a Spaniard he had met at a gay bar in Sydney. When the Spanish man left town, the young lawyer brushed off a bruised heart and ventured out again. "I remember being at my apartment in Kirribilli and looking out at all the little lights [across the harbour] in Sydney and the eastern suburbs and thinking, 'There must be someone out there.' And then I went in by the ferry." Call it fate. Van Vloten was out for a drink, too. He remembers the night just as clearly, including Kirby's opening conversational gambit: an eccentric dash of German history. "He was dressed in a very odd combination Learn American English of clothes," van Vloten recalled to the ABC.