Fifty Februaries ago former High Court Justice Michael Kirby met a dashing Dutchman called Johan van Vloten, on a hot summer’s night at the Bottoms Up bar of the old Rex Hotel in Kings Cross.

On Monday night, half a century to the day later, the two men were married before family and close friends at their Bondi Junction home. It was a small celebration for a big love affair.

Michael Kirby married his partner Johan van Vloten on the 50th anniversary of when they first met on Monday. Credit:Hadden Motion Pictures

“They explored the world and each other. They liked what they discovered,” the celebrant Michelle Bailey told the crowd. In the private ceremony, with Justice Kirby’s brother Donald, and Mr van Vloten’s nephew Len acting as witnesses, those gathered heard that the marriage of these two men was “proof positive of the capacity of love to prevail over obstacles, hostility, change and the passing of time”.

Although within weeks of their 1969 meeting, the two were introduced and accepted by their respective families, it would take 25 years for their homosexual relationship to become enshrined in federal law in 1994, and another 48 before they could marry in Australia.