Charles Lowe was born near Warrnambool, Victoria. His father became blind the year Charles was born, and the Lowe family struggled financially. Charles became a teacher at Hawksburn Grammar School and at St Paul’s Cathedral Choir School.
Lowe was determined to study at university, and passed the necessary matriculation exams while working to support himself. At the University of Melbourne he graduated BA (1900), MA (1902) and LLB (1904). He borrowed money for the expensive fee, or premium, articled clerks commonly had to pay their employers.
Lowe was admitted to the Bar in 1905, and in 1927 progressed to the Supreme Court bench. In the same year he joined the Council of the University of Melbourne, where he was an active member of the Law Faculty and one of the advocates for appointing a full-time, salaried vice-chancellor. When Chancellor Sir John Latham resigned in 1941, Lowe became Chancellor of the University.
Lowe was a patient and careful judge who cultivated an image of impressive judicial reserve. But it was as the head of government commissions of inquiry that he was most widely known. He investigated the air crash that killed three federal cabinet ministers in 1940, the Japanese air raids on Darwin in 1942 and the 'Brisbane Line' affair of 1943. As the Cold War intensified, in 1949-50 he investigated the activities of the Communist Party in Victoria, with scrupulous fairness.
Knighted in 1948, Sir Charles Lowe remained a judge of the Supreme Court for a record term of thirty-seven years. He heard his last case at the age of 82, before taking leave and officially retiring two years later. He had earlier donated his law library to the University.
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