Foreword by Frank Martin, Counsel at Queen’s Arms Chambers, Toowoomba
I first met Steve Zillman on his very first day in law, when he came to work in the Prosecution section of Crown Law in the Justice Department. I asked him what he was doing after work and when he said “Nothing, probably going home”. I invited him for a beer. From then on, our shared interests formed a friendship which lasted for over 50 years. Those interests included, in no particular order:
Drinking beer and red wine.
The Bar (we were admitted on the same day, 16 December 1976).
Betting on the horses.
Playing cricket together.
Marrying girls born in Goondiwindi.
Roy Orbison.
His reputation at the Criminal Bar was second to none. He was the best I had seen. He worked in the company of such luminaries in the law as Spender QC, Greenwood QC, Vasta QC, Miller QC, Kerry O’Brien, Martin Burns QC, Lynch QC, Adrian Gundelach, Paul Gaffney, Martin QC, Durward QC, McSporran QC, Colin Reid, Marshall Irwin, Mark Johnson and many others.
Steve loved joining his colleagues and friends at the Grosvenor Hotel after court for “a beer or two”. Those drinks accompanied by each telling the other how good they were in Court that day. Steve did not only excel in advocacy and the law. His Honour Judge Lynch KC DCJ also told me that in his opinion, Steve was the best fisherman he had ever seen. Steve and a group of fellow practitioners would go fishing at least once a year. Steve was appointed their Captain because he wanted to control the speed of the boat, responsibly because he did not want others going too fast.
My last lunch with Steve was at the Norman Hotel on 26 November 2024. We were joined by Judge Lynch KC, Greg McGuire, David Cameron and Bad Boy Leroy Brown (the Bailiff at the Maryborough Courthouse for many years). It was a great get together and a time for reminiscing, friendship, a steak, beer and red wine. I stayed at Steve’s place that night where the wine and war stories lasted long into the night.
I last saw Steve on Monday, 2 June 2025, when I wheeled him downstairs so that he could have a fag. In fact, he had five and he made sure I picked up the butts. Despite everything Steve had a great sense of humour. I can recall one time I visited him at his unit and he went outside for a cigarette. When he came back inside he told me “I’ve been told that you can’t die twice from lung cancer.”
Vale Steve Zillman.
Stephanie Zillman’s Eulogy
Only three years ago we were here farewelling my mother, Suzanne, and it is terrible we are here again.
Dad told me many times about the void mum’s death left in his life, and while he certainly didn’t want to die – he was accepting of it, peaceful even … as his life hadn’t been, and could never be the same without her.
As many of you here know, Dad outlived the initial projections he was given by nearly a year.
Maybe everyone handles a terminal diagnosis differently, but Dad was in the camp that wanted a timeline. He asked his oncologist repeatedly for a projection, and to Dad’s immense frustration, he just wouldn’t bite. So he changed tack. He said to the doctor: “look I just want to know how long have I got”. And in my profession, I’m more used to people asking, “how long will I get?” This got a laugh, and Dad got what he wanted.
The cancer certainly caused Dad periods of suffering, which was just awful, but on the whole, he lived comfortably right up until the final weeks of his life. Often he was well enough to go for lunch with friends. On that note, sometime in the last couple of months Dad said to me just about the last thing you’d expect a person dying of cancer to say … and that was: he’d actually had a ball over the last year. It was easy to see why. He had enjoyed an inexhaustible parade of mates, mates-of-mates, family and other well wishers dropping in to see him on a daily basis, as well as calling him up on the phone. I periodically stayed with Dad over the past year, and sometimes in a single day there would be three or four separate groups of friends coming to see him. My brother Richard and I laughed more than once that when he called Dad up to say he’d drop in, he was discouraged from coming because Dad’s day was already full.
I had always known our Dad was well-liked, but I didn’t know how deep those rivers ran. There are many people here today and listening in who went above and beyond any reasonable expectations of what friends would do. To say ‘thank you’ doesn’t come close to covering it.
Dad really took pleasure in life. A cold beer (and then several more), a glass of red (and then several more), the broncos playing on a Saturday afternoon, a perfect Brisbane morning, doing the crossword, a dirty joke, relishing a funny story, a lovely bunch of flowers, nice food, good company, and yes, a cigarette.
Dad also had a real sweet tooth .. and my brothers and I were tickled at Dad’s request for Richard to bring him a kilo of chemist jelly beans in the hospital.
He was also very precise and particular … I suppose it’s what made well suited for the law. The other half of his request to Richard, alongside the jelly beans, was a bottle of red … ideally make it a 2015 .. actually look for a West Australian .. maybe a cab merlot ….
The terminal nature of Dad’s illness prompted many important conversations and he summarised for me the things that had brought him the greatest satisfaction in life. They were:
His children
Meeting my mum and the lives they built together
Being admitted, and:
The ongoing satisfaction of his work.
The story of Dad’s life begins in Cooroy on the Sunshine Coast. He was the third surviving child of my grandparents, Nancy and Les, born in 1953. My grandfather was a police officer, and my grandmother ran their home. Dad’s early memories were of life at the Tewantin police station .. running around barefoot, and honing his first passion in life – fishing.
There’s a photo in the booklet that I rummaged for hours to find because I love it so much. It’s a candid photo of young Steve … he’s about 8 or 9 years old .. with a hand reel in his little spot fishing off the Doonella bridge in Tewantin. Later on in life, he had his honeymoon with my Mum in the same area and we have many happy memories of family holidays there too.
I asked Dad’s brother Peter to recall what Dad was like as a child. He said Dad was very much the little brother, a bit of a scallywag. He was miffed about something once and tried to cut down the post that held up the back steps with a tomahawk. Luckily he didn’t get very far.
Dad had suffered a squint and short-sightedness as a child … and at some point, my grandparents finally realised he needed glasses. Peter recalls this as a turning point. It helped him so much, and everyone noticed Dad was actually really bright! His brothers were marvelling just this week at how fast Dad could solve a sudoku, and would crack the cryptic crossword everyday, scribbling the answers on his newspaper on the bus to work.
Dad said over the years what a happy home he had enjoyed as a child. My grandparents were hard-working, upstanding folk. My Nana was also known to be thrifty, and one of Dad’s enduring embarrassments from childhood occurred when they moved from Tewantin up to Townsville in 1965.
For reasons known only to my Nana, Dad and Peter were sent off to their first day at their new school in their previous school’s uniforms! Luckily, Dad was a popular kid who went alright on the footy field, and so survived this humiliation. I’m told he was a good winger, and I never knew until this week he had been a really fast runner. He wasn’t one to boast. Dad did love his footy, and there’s some wonderful photos of his time playing Rugby League as a teen in Townsville. Some of the great mates he made during that time are listening in today from up North. Later on in life, he loved watching my brothers play schoolboy rugby themselves.
In his own words, he mucked up his grades in senior … spent too much time smoking behind the toilet block I suppose … and when he failed to meet the grade needed to get into law, he decided to knuckle down, repeated the year .. and the good grades set in train his great career.
He was excited to move to Brisbane for university and made lifelong friends at Cromwell college. I loved hearing some of the old stories from his friends who dropped in to see him in the last year.
My recollection is that Dad didn’t set out with the goal of working in criminal law, but rather, it half found him. When he applied for some kind of general administration job with the state government whilst he was at university, he was sent over to the Crown law office and this is how he got his taste for the criminal law.
My parents met when Dad was a baby-faced 25-year-old, so it’s no surprise that my mum didn’t initially believe that Dad was fully qualified, and had been admitted as a barrister two years prior.
Dad always raved about how beautiful my mother was. He felt he’d won the lottery in meeting her, and wasted no time in locking things down. They married just six months after meeting, in May 1979. Shortly before Dad died, his friend Kerry O’Brien was visiting him, and told me actually, they had been planning on going travelling overseas … but meeting my mother had sent those plans up in flames.
I’m the youngest of my parents four children. Michael came first in 1982, Nicholas in 1984, Richard in 1986, and then me in 1988.
In sifting through our family albums over the past several days, it was a joy to properly notice from the vantage point of now being a parent myself, what full, happy lives our family has had, and how hard my parents worked to provide that for us. Beaming out from the photos: barbecues, fishing trips, beach holidays, kids sport on weekends, parties, restaurants … it’s easy to see why Dad was satisfied and content with his life.
My brothers and I all fondly remember the meals he made for us over the years. Meat was king, and Dad certainly knew his way around a butcher’s shop and where to get the best seafood. We all grew up thinking it was normal to have giant meat platters done on a coal weber, served up regularly. It was only in the last decade or so Dad moved on from the coals to a gas weber, and this significantly improved the wait time on these feasts. In fact late meals, and lateness in general was an occupational hazard for our large family. One of Dad’s favourite one-liners came when we rolled up to a family function somewhere … and my brother Nicholas declared: this is the earliest we’ve ever been late!
The sort of household my parents ran was one where the newspapers were on the breakfast table every morning, and the news would be on the TV at night. We always sat down at the table to eat together, sharing the news from from our days. Education was highly valued, and we were sent to good private schools. This came at considerable financial cost given there were four of us.
To that end .. this week I came across a copy of an old letter Dad penned to our former neighbours who had moved abroad. Dated December 1998, it made me laugh out loud.
It begins:
You pair of bastards. We were offended to receive your long, rambling letter by which you attempted to have us believe you had written to us personally. It appears on its face to be have been mass produced and sent to everyone you have ever met.
It goes on … with the exception that a couple of years has passed and that we slide further into poverty, not much has happened. 1999 sees Michael in grade 12, Nicholas in grade 10, Richard in grade 8, and Stephanie in grade 6. In case you didn’t realise that equals three sets of school fees. I continue to be intermittently employed as a barrister, Sue as a school teacher.
Dad had the most wonderful sense of humour. There were so many great jokes he had stored away in that brain of his. But it wasn’t just the punchline jokes he was good at (although he had at a hundred of those in his repertoire). He was also a master of storytelling. We’d laugh about everything from the rude manner of the bus driver to unintentionally witty retorts from someone in the witness box. One of my favourites was from a young know-it-all Dad was cross-examining. The young man had replied ‘yes’ to a question that wasn’t a yes or no answer. Dad said, ‘well yes what?’ ‘Well yes your majesty!’ he shot back. It hung around for years.
Dad’s personality was extremely tough and resilient. He seemingly could not be rattled, and huge stresses he carried at times, particularly during big trials, weren’t visible to anyone except my mum.
He didn’t mince words. One such time was when I was in high school. I got it in my head I’d like to try debating and Dad came with me one weekend to watch me in the try-outs. I was totally unprepared for thinking and speaking on my feet, and just badly mucked the whole thing up. Afterwards, Dad was waiting for me in the street outside my school, having a dart. I walked over to him and as he butted out his cigarette, he said ‘in the theatre they call that dying on stage’.
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, my brothers and I have great memories of family holidays. As I mentioned earlier, Dad was a keen fisherman. Just two years ago we replicated a great holiday we’d first had some 20 years ago on Fraser Island, where Dad and my brothers caught what seemed like an illegal number of Taylor off the rocks. Since the mid-2000s or so, and after the noose of school fees had loosened from around Dad’s neck … he regularly made a trip up to a place up in the gulf called Sweers Island with a group of mates. I was tickled to recently learn Dad had the nickname ‘the Captain’ … dubbed so for a few reasons. Firstly, as the elder statesman of the group, it was his privilege to operate the boat tiller and not have to muck around with the anchor. Secondly, he was a really good fisherman .. he had a knack for it … honed over at least six and a half decades. Just last week, I was showing Dad a photo of a beach up the coast. He remarked there were some good looking gutters along that shoreline.
In addition to those trips up to the Gulf, my parents went on some great holidays all around the world in the 15 years prior to Covid. They were particular fans of cruises, and in some resurfaced old memory cards one of the best laughs I’ve had in living memory is thanks to a video of my parents dancing together on an otherwise empty dance floor on a cruise ship. They loved one another’s company, and after the four of us entered adulthood, their lives settled into an easy rhythm of movies on weekends, dinners with friends, and planning their next holiday.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the other great loves of Dad’s life … his grandchildren. Dad would unashamedly boast to anyone willing to listen about how beautiful they are. You didn’t need to be his in personal company to hear this … he would regularly forward photos and videos to friends. My one-year old daughter was in my arms at the hospital when he demanded of his doctor “Is that not the most beautiful baby girl you’ve ever seen?” And he did require an answer, by the way. Dad wore his heart on his sleeve, and left his family in no doubt of his love for us. He was also a great son-in-law to my grandparents and was loved like a brother by mum’s sisters, Robyn and Christine.
My parents were always on hand to help, but never control us. They encouraged us to think for ourselves, and Dad was a great teacher of his analytical thinking. I have relied on his wise counsel to guide me, and there’s no problem you could bring to him that he wouldn’t calmly help you solve. He felt our achievements more proudly than his own, and similarly he couldn’t abide one of us being in pain. In fact, tears seemed to be his achilles heal, and if he were here today he’d be holding me tight, desperate for me to be ok.
One of the last things Dad said to me in the final conversation I had with him, just 10 days ago with my brother Nicholas, was how proud he was of all of us. He also apologised for mistakes he’d made along the way, and I reassured him that no one is perfect.
My chest has swollen with pride as I’ve spoken to Dad’s close friends and colleagues in recent days. He was so well respected, and a cherished friend to many. Some of the ways he has been described to me are as being principled and fearless in the courtroom, a gifted barrister, and a great mentor who gave freely of his time and wisdom, shaping the careers of many young lawyers.
As I begun, there’s a terrible deja vu for many of us here … we farewelled my mother only three years ago.
Dad instructed me to do everything the same for him … the main difference he stipulated – no songs. And specifically no Bee Gees. I’m not sure why … I didn’t know he especially didn’t like them.
However, to my mum’s eternal frustration Dad was the king of the loophole, always ducking and weaving. And I recall a specific conversation when my mum’s father died … we were back at the house, and listened to my grandfather’s favourite song, which he’d said he wanted played at his funeral. Dad remarked ‘I love it! In fact, I’ll have it too!’.
So I’m sorry Dad, but I’m relying on your previous instructions. Please forgive me.
Glen Cranny
In discussing Steve’s professional legacy with colleagues, some recurring themes emerged.
He was widely regarded as one of the best criminal counsel in Queensland, certainly the best junior counsel. He was a highly skilled cross-examiner, and a great strategist/tactician. He loved (and was good at) finding a little point of law or technicality, particularly one that fatally crippled the prosecution case
He had some weaknesses too, however – he was not fond of having to produce written outlines (I encouraged my solicitors to regard briefing Steve as an opportunity to develop their own submission-writing skills). Nor was he fussed about clients who displayed too much self-pity – he liked his clients to be stoic and uncomplaining. Having said that, he found humour in almost every part of his work – whether that be in the incredible instructions from clients, the self-interest of a witness, the peculiar mannerisms or habits of an opponent or a judge.
He loved telling humorous stories of his own experiences as a barrister. One of his favourites was an episode of cross-examination where he had learned, just prior to trial, that the complainant had recently been charged with assaulting his mother.
The opening of his cross-examination went like this:
Q: You’re a violent man aren’t you? — No, not really
Well, you bashed your mother recently, didn’t you? — (witness pointing a finger at Steve) She was out of line!
In recent years, we have been accusing him of becoming too picky in his choice of work. Before accepting a brief, he would insist on knowing what the case was about, whether it involved any complicated scientific evidence (a no go for him) , whether the prosecutor was a fool, etc. The phrase was coined that he applied a ‘limousine rank rule’, rather than the cab rank rule.
He was generous with his time and loved talking about the criminal law. He enjoyed telling me that a number of solicitors had in recent times thanked him, indicating that he had taught them all they knew about the law. His standard reply was “that may be so, but I have not taught you all that I know”.
He enjoyed people with a bit of sass and personality. One time we were having a celebratory lunch in Cairns after getting a trial tossed out on the first morning. He ordered a chicken parmigiana, specifying to the waitress that he wanted the eggplant removed. He explained to her with a wink “you see, real men don’t eat eggplant”. Her rejoinder, under her breath, was “real men don’t eat chicken parmigiana!”. He loved that and dined out on that story for years.
He won a case for me once because, of all people, the doctor being called by the Crown was a heavy smoker. Steve and the doc had a long chat over a few smokes at morning tea, and the cross-examination of the doctor thereafter went entirely in our favour.
For years he deluded himself in thinking that Sue did not think that he was still smoking. During the Palm Island trial in Townsville, we would try to avoid the media each day as we walked into court. He was concerned one day though that the media had filmed us during the lunch break whilst he was smoking. So he approached them and made a deal that we would walk right past them, to give them their shot, provided they didn’t air the footage of him smoking.
He had plenty of ups and downs with his illness, and – in keeping with his own requirements of clients – made sure that he didn’t descend into self-pity. At one point last year he expressed embarrassment that having effectively ‘signed off’ and said his goodbyes to people, he picked up and was still “hanging around” months later. I suggested to him that this was reminiscent of Trevor Gillmeister discharging himself from hospital to play State of Origin that night. He preferred the apocryphal story of renowned Brisbane rugby league player from the 70s, Fonda Metassa, who was knocked out cold in a game once, and was carted off in the back of “one of those poo-brown ambulances”. As the ambulance approached the sideline, it stopped and the back doors burst open, for Fonda to rejoin the game.
Terry Martin
Glen Cranny and I were asked by Steve to say a few words about his career at the Bar. We both interpreted that to mean we had to tell you how good he was.
As for my brief to tell you how good Steve was:
Steve was highly intelligent, had a phenomenal memory (including for case law), was witty and charming.
He was also infuriatingly stubborn and opinionated.
I suspect it was this combination of traits which made him such an exceptional Barrister. He understood human nature so well.
Judges respected him, even when he told them they were wrong, sometimes subtly, other times less so.
Whoever prosecuted against him, dreaded him. Including me on a couple of occasions.
Steve’s cross examinations were a masterclass in how it’s prepared and how it’s done.
And juries loved him, notwithstanding how horrible his client may have been. He had the common touch.
Steve was a brilliant black-letter lawyer and wonderful advocate. He had a ton of commonsense and a great sense of humour.
He had the lot.
When Steve became ill, I was most hesitant to go to see him. At first I had to be accompanied by a couple of mates.
But he made it so easy.
He was delightful, hilarious company, and continued to be so whether in or out of hospital. And this continued to the end.
He loved having visitors, but liked to space them throughout the day. It got to the point where we had to ring or text to make an appointment.
On the day before he died, I was at one point alone with him and he was in and out of consciousness.
He woke up, saw me and said ‘g’day Terry’.
I then said ‘now that we’re alone, I can tell you that you’re an absolute legend’.
He said: ‘Thanks. Tell me again when someone else is here.’
Steve loved his family and loved his career and loved life, right to the end.
And now in front of you all: Steve, you’re an absolute legend.
