Lincoln Crowley didn’t take any classes in legal studies at high school in Charters Towers, Queensland in the 1980s. Nor did he spend much time thinking about the state’s supreme court. In fact, he doesn’t think he even knew it existed.

“But I knew what was fair and what was not,” Crowley, the state’s newest supreme court judge, said at his swearing-in ceremony in Brisbane.

The Warramunga man has become Australia’s first Indigenous supreme court judge after being sworn in on Monday.

“I knew it was not fair when I applied for a part-time job after school at a local shop and later found out that the manager threw my application in the bin, while saying: ‘They’re Aboriginal, aren’t they?’

“And I knew it was not fair when teachers suggested that I wouldn’t amount to anything and when others judged me, and my worth, and potential without even knowing me.”

Crowley was inspired by his father, a retired army officer and one of the Australian Defence Force’s first Indigenous majors.

His dad encouraged his children to be educated, work hard and make something of themselves.

Crowley said he always resisted measuring himself with “someone else’s yardstick”.

He was admitted to the bar in 2003 and worked with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Legal Service and the New South Wales Crown Solicitor’s Office. He has been a Crown prosecutor for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions in Queensland, a private counsel for the NSW DPP, and has served as a senior counsel assisting the disability royal commission.

The bar association’s president, Damien O’Brien QC, said Crowley was highly respected in the legal community and by law students.

O’Brien said Indigenous Australians had lacked a voice within the legal system for too long and that the senior judiciary hasn’t reflected the important role of First Nations people as the custodians of the country.

“Your Honour’s elevation to become the first First Nation superior court judge in this land is an important step in a much longer process to ensure that this historical role is rectified,” O’Brien said.