footsteps into law was never a foregone conclusion. Now with 50 years of practising law in Singleton you might be

forgiven for thinking it was. Kate Morris reports. PETER Dunlop has been practising law in Singleton for five decades and he was recently awarded life membership to the NSW Law Society for his 50 years of service.

He said one of the main reasons he joined the law profession all those years ago was because it was a career that would keep his mind active.

“I think I wanted to be in an area where you exercise your mind,” he said.

“But to practice so long, you’ve got to enjoy it of course,” he said.

So by following in his father’s footsteps before him and his older brother Ian, Peter Dunlop obviously landed on his feet, but on leaving school his plans were to become a farmer.

“Strangely enough, the year I left school I became sick,” he said.

“I came home from boarding school in Sydney and for six weeks I was confined to my bed, they said it was muscular flu.

“Polio was rampant at the time, Dr Peter Gill, insisted on me being confined to quarters, I was very sick,” he said.

“I was going to apply for Hawkesbury Agricultural College, but I was a bit late getting my application in.

“So I guess it was a touch of fate.”

Peter said although he wasn’t off the land, and was a born and bred Singleton boy, rural Australia was booming at the time.

“It was the 1950s and Australia was riding on the sheep’s back,” he said.

“There were lots of opportunities opening up.”

But Peter decided to take a different path and being the middle child of a family of five children meant making his own way ahead.

With his older brother Ian at Sydney University studying law, and his sister Judith studying music at the Conservatorium and another two brothers at Scots College the best option for Peter was to study law through a (Solicitors Admission Board) Diploma and an ‘articles of clerkship’.