Former governor-general Sir Ninian Stephen has died in Melbourne, aged 94.

Government House announced the death of Sir Ninian, who served as governor-general from 1982 to 1989, on Sunday.

“Our nation is a better place due to his service and he will be most warmly remembered,” Governor-General Peter Cosgrove said in a statement.

“Sir Ninian served in the AIF during World War II, was a most eminent and distinguished person throughout his legal career and a very fine governor-general.”

Sir Ninian was a High Court and international judge, ambassador, peacemaker and Australia’s only immigrant governor-general.

His period at Yarralumla, from 1982 to 1989, was uncontroversial and remembered chiefly for his warmth and informality.

His later career – and with the possible exception of his predecessor Sir Zelman Cowen, no G-G has gone on to a busier and more varied career – caused the occasional criticism and involved him in many of the world’s tragedies.

And, though he had a towering reputation as a lawyer in Australia and overseas, he once confessed that he never liked the law much.

Sir Nina was a High Court and international judge, ambassador, peacemaker and Australia’s only immigrant governor-general. Photo: AAP

Ninian Martin Stephen was born on June 15 1923 on a poultry farm near Oxford, England. His Scottish father died of the effects of World War I mustard gas poisoning when he was six months old.

His mother Barbara went back to her old job as paid companion to a Miss Nina Milne, the expatriate daughter of a wealthy Queenslander. Miss Milne took mother and son under her wing, saw that he went to good British and continental schools and brought them to Melbourne in 1940.

World War II, in which he saw active service in New Guinea and Borneo and became a lieutenant, interrupted his law studies at the University of Melbourne.

After the war Sir Ninian completed his degree and married Valerie Sinclair. They had five daughters.

He who worked mainly in commercial, equity, taxation and constitutional law and became a QC in 1966. Future Liberal deputy leader Neil Brown, who worked under him as a young barrister, said he was the most obliging and helpful person he’d ever met.

In 1970 he became a Victorian Supreme Court judge and two years later went to the High Court. Sir Ninian formed part of the moderate centre of a court divided between the conservative chief justice Sir Garfield Barwick and the radical activist Lionel Murphy.

He was middle of the road on states’ rights – with the dissenting minority when the court sustained the Commonwealth’s sovereignty over the territorial sea, but with the majority that decided on a broad interpretation of the external affairs power.

In 1982 Malcolm Fraser chose him to replace Cowen as G-G. It was widely welcomed. Gough Whitlam congratulated Fraser for choosing a better Governor General than he had.

Gareth Evans, then shadow attorney-general, said Sir Ninian was “one of the key components of the enlightened majority which had recently been emerging on the High Court”.

Sir Ninian embarked on the usual round of vice-regal activities, attending functions great and modest. At the Cobargo show he sashed the mother instead of the baby.

Although a keen bushwalker, he was not much into sport. His daughter Sarah has told how, when offered the No.1 ticket at the Hawthorn Football Club, it had to be explained what this meant, who the players were and how they were infinitely more important than the Queen’s representative.

His only constitutionally delicate moment came in 1983 when Fraser, anxious to call an election before Bob Hawke replaced Bill Hayden as Labor leader, asked for a double dissolution on the grounds that the Senate had twice rejected a string of bills.

The prime minister turned up unexpectedly at Yarralumla with a weighty document and asked for an immediate decision. Sir Ninian, who had another engagement, refused; promising one in about three hours.

The deadline was stretched another hour when Sir Ninian asked for more information. By then, Hawke was the Labor leader; and five weeks later, prime minister.

In her memoir, Hazel Hawke recalled that the Stephens invited the Hawkes to dinner on their first weekend at the Lodge.

Hawke, warming to their hosts’ informality, asked him why he’d become G-G when he was an eminent judge.

To our surprise he replied, ‘Well, I never really liked the law much’,” Hazel Hawke wrote.

Women no longer had to curtsy, wear gloves or retire after dinner while the men drank port. At functions, his lounge suit would often be swamped by a sea of municipal chains, robes and wigs.

Hawke extended Sir Ninian’s term, which meant he was G-G through all the celebrations and ceremonies of 1988, Australia’s bicentennial year.

In 1989, Sir Ninian stepped down as G-G and immediately plunged into controversy by suggesting the abolition of the states.

Soon after Hawke made him Australia’s first ambassador to the environment.

He was only the second former G-G to accept a government job and the first, Sir John Kerr, never took up his post as ambassador to UNESCO because of the furore his appointment caused.

In 1992 the British and Irish governments chose Sir Ninian to head a new round of peace talks in Northern Ireland.

From Belfast to The Hague a year later, when he became one of the judges on the new international tribunal to try war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

General counsel for the United Nations Hans Corell said of Sir Ninian’s work on the tribunal, and a later appeal court covering Yugoslavia and Rwanda: “In his knowledge, wisdom and grace, he was one of the leading judges on the bench.”

As he approached his 80s, Sir Ninian remained in demand.

He advised on South Africa’s constitution and helped negotiate a way through a political impasse in Bangladesh. He took part in an investigation in Burma on behalf of the International Labor Organisation and worked on setting up a tribunal to hear Cambodian atrocities. He helped draft a constitution for post-Taliban Afghanistan.

As High Court judge Michael Kirby said at an 80th birthday dinner for him: “Serving Australia was not enough for Ninian Stephen. He went beyond and served a wider world.”