The #MeToo predictor: How Grafton Everest is always one step ahead

Who knew when Prof Ross Fitzgerald created his fictional character Grafton Everest to satirise Queensland politics and academia that Grafton would go on to conquer the world in novels that predict waves of key events.

We find it fascinating that however fanciful the satire, it so often gazumped by political and academic reality.

The first Grafton novel, Pushed From The Wings (1986) predicted the rise of the Me-Too movement in academia and the growing dependency of universities on full fee-paying foreign students.

In Busy in the Fog (1990) Grafton’s long-suffering wife Janet became “a lecturer in Fibre Art”. Lo and behold, a year later a Queensland regional university appointed a woman to such a lectureship.

The climax of Busy in the Fog features the flooding of Brisbane due to a collapse of the Wivenhoe Dam, which is built on a fault. Eerily, this anticipated the 2011 floods that ravaged south-east Queensland.

In Going Out Backwards, (2015) Grafton reviews the curriculum at his alma mater, the University of Mangoland. He finds that all the subjects in the traditional humanities curriculum have been relegated to a single faculty called ‘Legacy Studies.’

Since then, we have seen the role of the humanities increasingly diminished in the universities, with students charged higher fees because humanities subjects are deemed ‘non-contributory’ to the economy.

In Going Out Backwards Grafton is appointed to a committee investigating the effect of human activity on continental drift. Mining, pile driving and pogo sticks are accelerating crustal sliding, which will lead to more earthquakes volcanoes, and possible continental collisions. The following year, people in Oklahoma claimed that fracking in oil wells was leading to an increased incidence of earthquakes in the southern states.

In The Dizzying Heights (2019) Grafton visits the US where civil war has broken out between supporters of former president Ronald Thump and a left-wing coalition named the Sandersnistas. Shortly after publication, supporters of Donald Trump attacked the Capitol building in Washington in a violent attempt to shut the government down.

In The Lowest Depths (2021), which is primarily set in Russia, its dictatorial president-for-life, Vladimir Putrid is assassinated.

In Pandemonium (2023) veteran Aussie diplomat, Tony Murphy, explains to Grafton that, while Australia does not have the money to foster alliances with small countries, it can offer something far more attractive – to move to Australia and enjoy our way of life.

Immediately after the publication of Pandemonium, Anthony Albanese informed the people of Tuvalu that, should their island be submerged, they were welcome to relocate to Australia.

It is unprecedented in Australia, indeed the English-speaking world, for a series of political satires to be written chronologically, following the development of the same set of key characters.

As Neal Price wrote in the November issue of Quadrant: “Perhaps the closest are P. G. Wodehouse’s comic novels about the bumbling Bertie Wooster and his hugely intelligent manservant, Jeeves.”

But, unlike Grafton’s adventures, Wooster and Jeeves do not develop, and Wodehouse has a stationary sense of time.

Grafton Everest moves inexorably and somewhat accidentally upwards as he goes. In Going Out Backwards, Grafton enters, unwittingly and unprepared, into Federal politics.

In forthcoming books, Grafton journeyed further and further into uncharted territory. He went to London to foil a right-wing coup and became the first President of the new Inclusive Republic of Australia. In his capacity as President, he travelled to America where both the Democratic and Republican parties tried to woo him.

In The Lowest Depths, Grafton heads a United Nations delegation sent into Russia to uncover electoral fraud. There he uncovers an ancient secret about the Romanovs. In that book, the dictatorial president for life, Vladimir Putrid, is assassinated.

As Australian’s first Australian Secretary-General of the shambolic UN, in Pandemonium Grafton is part of a plan to avert a looming global disaster. This plan involves Australian Rules football – in particular the Collingwood Magpies.

The common factor in all of his adventures is that Grafton has no idea how he got into these perilous situations, nor what he is supposed to do, but somehow, he not only survives but succeeds.

Grafton’s tenth adventure hasn’t been announced … yet … but it may see the light of day. But what heights could he reach after heading the United Nations and saving the world from a cataclysm? Anything is possible in fiction. Watch this space.

Professor Ross Fitzgerald, emeritus Professor of History & Politics at Griffith University has authored or co-authored nine fictions about the life of Dr Professor Grafton Everest. Since moving to Sydney, he has worked with Brisbane-based award-winning writer, actor and television producer, Ian McFadyen, on four political satires – Going Out Backwards, The Dizzying Heights, The Lowest Depths, and Pandemonium have just been released as a boxed set – The Ascent of Everest : The Outrageous Adventures of Grafton Everest by Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen, Hybrid Publishers, $49.99 

Phil Brown 

Editor, InReview Queensland.

April 1, 2024