PART 1
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Herbert Vere Evatt was born on 30 April, 1894, at the Bank Hotel in East Maitland: his parents managed the hotel.
He attended East Maitland Superior Public School and was a choirboy at his local Anglican Church, but when the boy was only seven his father died.
The young Evatt was an outstanding student and very good at sport, because on his high school matriculation at Fort Street Model School in Sydney in 1911 he was dux and the captain of both the cricket and rugby teams. His time as a resident of Maitland ended with his primary schooling.
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Evatt went to the University of Sydney, where he completed a BA degree in 1915 with excellent results in mathematics, logic, philosophy and English and triple first-class honours. He finished an MA two years later and followed up with an LLB and an LLD. In his various studies he won what the
Australian Dictionary of Biography called "a swag of medals and awards". He also found time to be the President of the Students' Union, to edit the student literary magazine, to tutor and to play hockey, baseball, cricket and rugby league.
Evatt quickly came to prominence in his legal career, being admitted to the Bar in 1918 at only 24 years of age and practising mainly in industrial law.
A second career began in 1925 when he entered the NSW Legislative Assembly as the ALP member for Balmain. There he fell foul of Jack Lang, the legendary Labor premier, and became an outspoken backbench critic of Lang and his 'machine politics'. There was discord in 1926 when he chaired a parliamentary committee investigating allegations by the Labor Daily that the Nationalists had bribed Labor politicians.
Refused party endorsement in 1927, he stood for Balmain as an Independent. But he had no future in NSW politics while Lang remained the dominant figure.
In 1929 Evatt was appointed King's Counsel, and he quit state politics the following year to devote his attention to the law. His practice became one of the largest in the state, earning £8000-10,000 per year.
Before the end of 1930 he was appointed a justice of the High Court of Australia, at 36 the youngest to achieve such a post. His appointment was controversial because it was made by the Scullin Labor government, and Evatt's style of operation courted more controversy because some regarded him as secretive and disputatious.
He made many dissenting judgements and was regarded as a brilliant judge. But one fellow judge thought him capable of "most unjudicial" decision making.
Evatt's first 45 years were highly productive, at least in the law. Politics continued to attract him, however, and he entered federal parliament in 1940 as MP for the Sydney seat of Barton. The following year he became Attorney General and Minister for External Affairs in the government of John Curtin. His most important achievements were still in the future, however.
Few Maitland-born people could have had such a high-profile career as Evatt.
Had he achieved nothing of note after 1940 he would surely have been one of the highest achievers to have emerged from Maitland, but he was to accomplish even more in his later years and to play important roles on the national and international stages.