February 22, 2011
ALEX Chernov's story is anything but ordinary. Victoria's 28th Governor came to Australia as a 10-year-old boy fleeing war-torn Lithuania after the advancing Red Army killed his father.
Not able to speak English, he remembered being struck by the strange sight of men eating food from newspapers -- fish and chips -- and he had a tendency to skip school.
He went on to have a career as a lawyer, barrister, Supreme Court judge, Court of Appeal judge and then deputy chancellor and chancellor at the University of Melbourne.
But when Mr Chernov was announced by Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu yesterday as the state's new Governor, he was reluctant to speak about his extraordinary life journey.
"I don't want to dwell too much on my past," he told reporters, as his wife, Elizabeth Hopkins, their three children and six grandchildren looked on.
"But I was fortunate to have been brought up in a home where there was great emphasis on ethics, spiritual and ethical development and, importantly, broad education and hard work.
Those lessons have stood me in good stead.
I followed them pretty much all my life."
Mr Chernov, born in 1938 to Russian parents, was described by Mr Baillieu as a great success story of multiculturalism.
His grandfather, murdered by the Bolsheviks, was a minister in Russia's short-lived provisional government established after the 1917 February revolution.
"Alex Chernov brings to the role of governor a wonderful, wonderful story. A story of humble beginnings, a lifetime of hard work, great success and community service at the highest level."