By Warwick Magistrate Anne Thacker
Sitting Southern Downs regional courts, a magistrate’s work begins with preparations that appear to have little to do with legal knowledge, adjudicating and even perhaps legal decision-making. On the regional circuit, we start with ‘Where are we tomorrow?’
If tomorrow we are at Warwick: ‘Is it going to rain?’ Some might say the drought is a blessing, because if it’s going to rain special attention is given to who might rub shoulders with whom in the small waiting room outside the courtroom and in the registry. Mixing law abiding citizens going about their duties to register births, obtain passports etc. with criminals, witnesses and opposing witnesses, motor traffic offenders and drug traffic offenders cannot be avoided. Separating parties to domestic violence, and victims from alleged offenders becomes a logistical imperative only possible by utilising the park across the road.
Courthouses
Change comes slowly to these parts of the country. A Court of Petty Sessions first heard cases here from November 1847. The first courthouse was a slab structure built in Alice Street, Warwick. Then in 1862 tenders were called for a new courthouse. The new brick building was completed in October 1863. However, on completion the Courier Mail reported it was ‘unsuitable for the requirements of large and influential districts like ours’.
On 13 May 1885 it was decided to buy a site for a new courthouse on the corner of Fitzroy and Guy Streets. Construction was undertaken in a very informal fashion it would appear from the records which note that a clock tower was not part of the original design but added during construction. The stone subcontractor was out done by the builder who offered to build the entire building of stone at a lower cost than the tender accepted for brick and cement. Problems were encountered with the foundations and suddenly the building was raised by six inches to provide for surface drains. After the building was completed it was discovered to be excessively draughty and with poor acoustics so a false ceiling was added to reduce the volume of the courtroom and improve acoustics. The courthouse still in use today was completed in 1886. A few changes were made to the building inside during the 1970s but mainly to ensure larger rooms were divided to make more rooms, close up old fireplaces and add inside toilets. The inside toilets are not for public use. The old toilets outside are a place of great mystery. The cistern has disappeared twice this year. As well as drought the country has experienced a mice plague worth mentioning as one day I had a mouse appear in court beside the bar table, look at me, scuffle in apparent indignation and run behind the book case.
If tomorrow the court sits at Stanthorpe: the clerks must be instructed to pack only bare essentials and reminded not to wear high heel shoes. The courtroom is upstairs in a wonderful old art deco building but with no lift. Boxes of files and equipment must be carried upstairs. Sometimes the court must come downstairs to hear matters involving people in wheelchairs, the elderly and infirm. Stanthorpe attracts many overseas backpackers who come seasonally to pick fruit, drink wine from the local vineyards and sometimes end up before the court. Language barriers are sometimes overcome by use of the telephone interpreter service and often by patient questioning and hand gestures. Cultural differences and just plain different lifestyles can become a source of education for all. The prosecutor was surprised to learn one day that Korea has more multilane motorways than South East Queensland. More recently, I was taken by surprise with a claim that the respondent caused ‘the problem’ because gouges made along a dirt road could not be measured, as they were smudged out by his land rover when he refused to stop. It was apparently necessary to measure the gouges to determine the size of a UFO seen attempting to land.
If tomorrow we are at Goondiwindi: check the car for fuel, pack the car with work and personal belongings as we’ll sleep over a few nights. Don’t forget to book ahead for accommodation or you could be sleeping in the courthouse…. Check the weather—if it’s foggy we may delay departure. Goondiwindi has a court list special to itself as some people manage to be called before court on both sides of the border and come to each for everything or come to neither and send explanations that don’t relate to the charges at hand. Bail conditions can become very messy as they seek to manage a defendant’s movements between townships on either side of the border. Distance rules all decisions and compounds errors. So if it is forgotten that court
Courthouses
is sitting—as happened earlier this year—a defendant in custody was transported to Warwick and then all the way back to Goondiwindi. Meetings are always an added extra as the court attempts new and different strategies to address the difficulties faced by Murri people living around the border country. Goondiwindi often requires lateral thinking attempts: one day a prisoner had to be driven around the block in the police van as he refused to stop yelling and banging on the cell door and windows which stopped court hearing anything in the courtroom.
Distance will never change. Mice plagues come and go. The buildings rarely change except to rest heavier on their foundations but 21st century equipment and know-how effects a different working environment even in the country. Video-conferencing facilities reduce the need for prisoners to be transported from the prisons and make it easier for long-distance witnesses to give evidence. The Next–G network keeps us closer to our city-based colleagues and sources of information. Perhaps in the future with better mobile technology we might not need buildings at all.