Thatcher's documented background is in Queensland, Australia, where he studied at the University of Queensland and later entered the state's legal profession. Brisbane, the state capital, was the setting for both his university education and his legal career.
Thatcher studied at the University of Queensland, where he obtained a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Laws (Honours). The university is located primarily in Brisbane and is a public research university.
The University of Queensland began in 1911 with a small range of arts and science courses, and its law teaching developed later. A Faculty of Law was established in 1936 after a bequest from the Brisbane businessman Thomas Charles Beirne, and it began offering a Bachelor of Laws. Local graduates could then seek admission to the bar without studying in the southern states.
Thatcher practised as a partner of Feez Ruthning, a Brisbane law firm whose history reaches back to the nineteenth century. Its ultimate predecessor, Robert Little, had been practising law in Brisbane since 1846, and the firm later developed through partnerships of the Feez and Ruthning families.
The firm was known as Feez Ruthning & Co. from 1927 until 1986, when the "& Co." was dropped. In the same year Thatcher was admitted to the Queensland bar. In 1996 Allen Allen & Hemsley merged with Feez Ruthning, a Brisbane firm dating back to the nineteenth century, bringing the Brisbane practice into the Allens group.
