Kep Enderby knew something was afoot when he stood by Sir John Kerr at a Remembrance Day ceremony in 1975.

The first portent was that the then governor-general didn’t shake his hand.

“He just left me, walked away,” Enderby recalled in late 2013.

At the time, he was Attorney-General in the Whitlam government, having demanded and received the post following Lionel Murphy’s highly-controversial move to the High Court.

Enderby and his wife Dot knew the Kerrs well.

“But Lady Kerr was terribly cold. She turned to me and said: `Goodbye, Mr Attorney’,” he recalled.

A few hours later, Sir John dismissed Gough Whitlam and replaced him as prime minister with Malcolm Fraser.

The decision marked the beginning of the end of Enderby’s political career.

He lost his Canberra seat at the subsequent election, never to return as a parliamentarian.

Instead he returned to the law where he completed a distinguished career and became a noted advocate for civil liberties, especially the right to die.

For a once-accomplished golfer, old age did not sit well with Enderby.

“I’m a geriatric and I’m not enjoying life at all,” he told The Guardian in 2013.

Dementia was his deepest fear.

Not now. Keppel Earl Enderby – better known as Kep – has died aged 88.

Enderby was born at Dubbo in 1926. He is still fondly remembered in the central western NSW city where he completed his school education and returned to from time to time later in life.

He was a trainee pilot with the Royal Australian Air Force in 1944 and 1945, and after war’s end studied law at the University of Sydney.

From 1950 to 1954, he worked as a barrister in London and studied at the University of London.

It was while he was there that he made quite a name for himself as an amateur golfer, finishing 17th in the British Open at Royal Portrush Golf Club in 1951.

Behind him were some of the most famous names of Australian golf including Kel Nagle and Norman Von Nida, the latter failing to make the cut.

Nagle and Peter Thomson, who finished sixth, went on to win the Open.

Enderby returned to Australia in 1955 and practised law in Sydney.

He helped establish the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, beginning a passion that would end only with his death.

He moved to Canberra in the mid-1960s where he practised law while teaching part-time at the Australian National University.

He entered the federal parliament as a Labor MP in 1970, after a by-election for the seat of ACT.

Two years later and with Labor in power for the first time in 23 years, Whitlam appointed him minister for the ACT and the Northern Territory.

But his most significant political achievement would come in 1975, replacing Murphy as attorney-general.

It was no done deal at the time. Enderby said he demanded the job Whitlam was going to take for himself.

“I said, `Oh come off it, I think I deserve it’. He said, `All right, you bastard’.”

Enderby didn’t waste time as the nation’s first law officer, decriminalising abortion and homosexuality in the ACT.

He also pushed through parliament landmark no-fault divorce laws.

After politics, Enderby moved to Sydney and returned to the bar.

For 10 years from 1982 he was a judge of the NSW Supreme Court, before heading-up the Serious Offenders Review Council until 2000.

In retirement, Enderby continued to advocate civil liberties. On euthanasia, he was especially forthright.

“If I want to end my life, it’s my business,” he said in 2013.