Roma Mitchell

Roma Mitchell

Dame Roma Flinders Mitchell, AC, DBE, CVO, QC (2 October 1913 – 5 March 2000) was an Australian lawyer, judge and state governor. Mitchell was the first Australian woman to be a judge, a Queen's Counsel, a chancellor of an Australian university and the Governor of an Australian state.

Roma Mitchell was born in Adelaide in 1913, the second daughter and youngest child of Harold and Maude Mitchell (née Wickham).

A graduate of St Aloysius Convent College, Adelaide, she was made a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia in 1965. She was still the only female judge in South Australia when she retired 18 years later in 1983 although Justices Elizabeth Evatt and Mary Gaudron had been appointed to federal courts by the Whitlam Government.

She was Governor of South Australia from 1991–1996, the first female Governor in Australia. Mitchell also served as Chancellor of the University of Adelaide from 1983–1990 and was a member of the Council for the Order of Australia from 1981 to 1990.