Julie’s 50 Years at GQ

When someone sticks around — really sticks around — it’s worth pausing to acknowledge it. At GQ’s Inglewood office, loyalty runs deep. This month marks a number of impressive milestones: 12 years at GQ for Catherine Grogan, 20 for Carolyn Voce, 31 for Sandy Ellice — and an extraordinary 50 years for Julie Peterson.

Julie joined the team on 9 June 1975. She was 16. Her mum had arranged the interview, not because she thought Julie would get the job, but because it would be good life experience. Having forgotten her glasses, Julie struggled to read her own shorthand, but somehow still landed the role. “I was stunned,” she recalls. “I hadn’t even really thought about leaving school.” 

But leave she did — and half a century later, she’s still here. 

Julie’s first office was in what’s now Caffe Windsor. She worked for Hamish Shearer and shared the space with Theresa Aldridge, the accounts manager. Her job involved shorthand dictation, typing letters on a manual typewriter, and the classic junior duties — banking runs, vacuuming on Tuesdays, and tending to the office fire in winter. “You had to be careful what you threw on that fire,” she remembers. 

In the early 1980s, the firm moved into the former County Council office at 92 Rata Street, where the team still dwell today. That space has evolved too: walls shifted, rooms repurposed and a  branding change in 2004 with the Govett Quilliam merger.

There have been several eras during Julie’s time. Technology evolved from manual typewriters and drying photocopies fresh from the liquid-toner machine, to computers with cloud-based systems. There were three break-ins, countless farm settlements and more conveyancing transactions than Julie could possibly count. There were work parties and Christmas parades, including a particularly memorable appearance of Geoff dressed as a fairy. There were World Cup celebrations, office renovations, fieldays trips and all the day-to-day hustle and bustle of a legal firm in between. 

For many years, the Inglewood office was home to a tight-knit crew: Geoff, Sandy, Carolyn, and Julie. Catherine Grogan and Alice Tocher also spent years based in the office, and today, while some share their time between the New Plymouth and Inglewood sites, the team still includes Julie, Carolyn, Sandy and Catherine, in addition to Suzy Hale, Beth Seaver and Katrina Lyons. 

Julie doesn’t romanticise staying in one job for five decades and she’s the first to tell younger staff not to wait as long as she did before going overseas or trying something new. But that doesn’t diminish what she’s contributed to her team, her clients and the wider GQ firm. We are immensely grateful for her commitment, her care, and the way she’s quietly kept the wheels turning for 50 years. To Julie, we say thank you.

Happy Anniversary, from us all at GQ.