VIC:Alex Chernov inaugurated as Vic governor

AAP General News (Australia)
04-08-2011
VIC:Alex Chernov inaugurated as Vic governor

By Mike Hedge

MELBOURNE, April 8 AAP - As he began his new job as Governor of Victoria, Alex Chernov
expressed a thought he is likely to have had in common with many of his predecessors.

"What do I do now?"

No doubt, Mr Chernov, 72, will quickly come to terms with a role some see as a symbol
of stability and others as superfluous.

Born in Lithuania, he began his schooling in Austria and started the Australian portion
of his life in a migrant camp at Bonegilla in northeast Victoria, but has coped with more
complex situations.

Mr Chernov couldn't speak a word of English when he and his family arrived on a migrant
ship at Princes Pier in 1949.

Within 20 years, he had an honours degree in law from the University of Melbourne and
had been admitted as a barrister. A dozen years later, he was a Queen's Counsel and, at
59, Mr Chernov was a Supreme Court judge.

He became the Chancellor of the University of Melbourne in 2009.

On Friday, he began his stint as the 28th incarnation of the Queen's man in Victoria
with an investiture ceremony shrouded in vice-regal tradition, but with a liberal touch
of the colony over which he presides.

An audience of around 300 - including political, religious and community leaders and
former governors, governors-general and a former prime minister - stood as a trumpet fanfare
announced Mr Chernov's arrival in the duck-egg blue ballroom of Government House.

Appropriately, the first speeches came from Wurrundjeri elder Joy Murphy Wandin and
Carolyn Briggs, an elder of the Bunerong people, who welcomed Mr Chernov to the land of
their ancestors.

Premier Ted Baillieu, a man with a background in real estate, then welcomed the new
governor to Melbourne's best-placed home, Mr Chernov pledged his allegiance to the Queen
and his official secretary, Charles Curwen, in his best baritone, made the official announcement.

"Ladies and gentlemen, His Excellency, the Governor, has assumed office."

Then followed the crowning moment as the Eltham Primary School choir produced perhaps
the best rendition of Waltzing Matilda to have filled the grand ballroom.

The party then continued on the lawn, to the relief of the new governor.

"I feel a lot better now that I'm outside," Mr Chernov said.

With his wife Elizabeth, his three children, their spouses, their six children and
a dozen or so other family members, Mr Chernov posed for photographs and offered his first
thoughts on his new life.

"I think my family is more excited than I am," he said.

Turning to an aide, he then enquired, for what certainly won't be the last time in
his five-year term, what he should do next.

AAP mh/pmu/ajw

KEYWORD: GOVERNOR VIC WRAP (PIX AVAILABLE)

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