However, it may come as a surprise that the children of Bryan Cosgriff often saw their dad outside, wearing a bedsheet and pretending to be the ghost of someone called Ali Ben Choo and spooking them through a window before running off laughing.
“He was quite playful by nature,” Mr Cosgriff’s daughter Dominique Cosgriff said.
“What people saw in court was the version of dad that wore a suit and tie and we saw the dad version of that.’’
Mr Cosgriff died at the end of June after a month of health complications and was remembered by family as a funny, caring father and grandfather.
He was 86, celebrating his birthday a week before he died.
Mr Cosgriff was born in Melbourne and went straight into working in the legal system when he left school, training to become a magistrate with a handful of children at home.
Daughter Jacinta Cosgriff remembered her father as someone who was super organised, had rules we had to follow and who was very, very funny.
“He was like Shakespeare, if he didn’t have a word or a phrase for something he’d make one up,” she said.
He had nonsensical nicknames for all his children and would carry them off in a fireman lift when they would not go to bed and took glee in barging into their rooms when they slept in, whistling away.
“He’d do this whistle and then say ‘wakey, wakey, rise and shine, get up, get up, the morning’s fine,’ and then he’d throw the curtains open,” Dominique recounted him saying.
“He was so funny about it and so personable and cheerful that you couldn’t really be mad at him — you were mad at him because you wanted a lie-in — but it was hard to be too mad.”
While all the Cosgriff children were known as “the judge’s daughter”, which annoyed them as Mr Cosgriff was a magistrate, not a judge, both he and mum Margaret kept steady heads on their shoulders.
“We were allowed to have fun of course but we're expected to work hard and behave ourselves,” Dominique said.
“All five of us have a strong sense of social justice, and they taught us to be considerate because we were,” Jacinta said.
She said Bryan would also be the parent doing the tuck shop at school and running five children to sport on the weekend, which was “was never a chore”.
Mr Cosgriff’s son James, now a lawyer in Echuca, said his father was “a giant in legal circles and greatly respected by all”.
“He had a unique way of dispensing justice knowing when to be tough but also displaying humane sentencing when warranted.
"In his time court sat in the old court house but when the higher courts visited the Magistrates’ Court sat at the local scout hall, the masonic hall and the girls guide hall.
“He was sitting in the community of which he was a part and yet remained respected by all sides.”
Granddaughter Evie said her Poppy was always fun to be around.
“He was very fun and very fair and very playful,” she said.
“I remember being told he’d kafoozle boozle us if we were naughty, and every time we wore a top with spots or stripes he’d ask us how many there were and expect us to know it.
“He badgered us for years to learn the alphabet backwards and then when I finally did he said ‘all right, good job’ and walked off.”
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