For more than 40 years, Nita Leigh has shown up to the Queensland Law Society in Brisbane, quietly, consistently, and without fuss.
In a working world where long tenures are increasingly rare, her four decades of service stand out not for ceremony, but for their steadiness and purpose.
“I didn’t want to retire,” the QLS Facilities and Client Services Manager said, frankly. “I still don’t, really.”
In truth, stepping away was never part of Nita’s plan, particularly not before she had quietly achieved a goal she’d set for herself years earlier: to surpass the tenure of the organisation’s longest-serving employee, Beryl Donkin. She did so deliberately, building in a careful “buffer” to ensure there could be no last-minute technicality.
Her family, however, has taken a different view. After more than 40 years of service, they have urged her, often and increasingly insistently, to step back. A recent knee replacement has only strengthened their case, adding a practical weight to what, for her, remains an emotional decision.
But retirement, for her, is less an ending than a puzzle. “I can’t just sit still,” she said. “That’s not me.” Already, her thoughts are turning toward mentoring young people at risk of falling through the cracks, an endeavour that reflects both her personal history and a professional life defined by care rather than title.
Her story begins well away from the corridors of Law Society House, on a dairy farm near Nanango. It was a childhood defined by hard work and self-reliance, qualities that would later find an unexpected place in office life.
“You fixed things yourself, you didn’t wait for someone else.”
After her mother died when she was still a teenager, the family dispersed. She moved between relatives; her father, a share farmer, took work where he could. The experience, she suggested without sentimentality, hardened a certain adaptability.
When she eventually came to Brisbane to find work, as country young people often did, the city felt both exciting and faintly terrifying. Even the trains presented a challenge. “I genuinely thought I might step off and there’d be no platform,” she laughed.
Her early clerical work required her to deliver documents across government offices, a job that, by chance, produced one of the more improbable episodes of her life.
As a schoolgirl, she had been part of a group selected to host public events attended by Flo Bjelke-Petersen, the high-profile Queensland Senator and wife of the then state premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Years later, while carrying papers through Brisbane’s Executive Building, she heard her name called.
“I turned around and there was Flo, running after me,” she recalled. “I said, ‘I’ve got to deliver these papers.’ And she said, ‘That’s all right, I’ll come with you.’”
The result was a surreal circuit of the building, the Senator accompanying her as she worked. Back at the office, colleagues were incredulous.
“They didn’t believe me,” she said. “I had to explain; this was someone I’d known from Kingaroy.”
In a city where hierarchy often defines access, the moment remains, in her telling, a small but telling inversion.
Her long tenure at QLS began with equal modesty. A six-week contract, taken simply to help fund a family purchase, quietly extended, then extended again. “They never told me to leave; they just gave me something else to do.”
Across four decades, she took on multiple roles: records management, finance, facilities, workplace health and safety. Titles mattered less than usefulness. She became known as someone who could fix things administratively, mechanically, emotionally.
In that time, QLS evolved dramatically. Nita moved from manual typewriters and carbon paper to digital systems; from card-index record keeping to databases; from a single “chief” executive to a layered leadership structure. She estimates she worked with more than 40 presidents and nearly 20 general managers.
Yet the core of her work remained stubbornly human. “I like people, and I like helping.”
Colleagues, she hopes, will remember her as someone who made others feel “safe, heard, nurtured” – language that suggests a role closer to custodian than employee. It is a form of labour rarely captured in organisational charts, but essential to their functioning.
That instinct for care was tested, and deepened, by personal tragedy.
During a period of acute crisis in her family, with the tragic passing of her son, Tony when he was 20, it was QLS that responded with a level of compassion that left a lasting impression. Managers adjusted expectations; colleagues provided practical support; even her husband, she noted, felt more supported through QLS than his own.
“It’s that support that kept me loyal,” she said.
In an economy where loyalty is often treated as outdated sentimentality, her experience suggests a more reciprocal model: institutions sustain individuals, and individuals, in turn, sustain institutions.
There is humour, too, threaded through her recollections. A notorious Christmas party nearly derailed by a building-wide sewage overflow; elaborate staff events where employees dressed up in costume; improvised performances that blurred the line between workplace and theatre.
These moments, she suggested, mattered. “We were like a family, we knew each other’s kids, each other’s lives.”
Such intimacy is rarer now, in larger, more formalised organisations. But its legacy is evident in the ease with which she navigates human complexity, a skill that outlasts any particular system or structure.
As she approaches retirement, her ambivalence remains clear. The milestone is achieved; the physical toll acknowledged; the family satisfied. And yet the notion of stepping away from daily purpose sits uneasily.
Her solution, characteristically, is not withdrawal but reinvention. Through mentoring programs aimed at vulnerable schoolchildren, she hopes to remain engaged, to listen, to offer what she has always offered.
“I made a promise,” she said quietly. “To help where I could.”
After four decades of steady service, Nita’s story reads less like a new beginning than a continuation: of attention, of care, and of a particular, enduring form of loyalty.
If you are a past colleague or friend of Nita, you are warmly invited to join a small celebration of her remarkable service. This will be an opportunity to share stories and personally thank Nita for her contributions.
Light refreshments and lunch will be provided.
Date: Friday, 28 May
Time: 10am – 2pm
Location: Queensland Law Society, 179 Ann Street, Brisbane.
Please RSVP to Felicity Culnane at f.culnane@qls.com.au.
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