Ross Fitzgerald’s novel “Pushed from the Wings is a riotously funny black comedy set in Queensland, Australia. His teetotal hypochondriac hero, Grafton Everest, is destined to become an Australian legend: an Antipodean early middle-age mix of Walter Mitty, Billy Liar and Sandy Stone. An anti-hero of outrageous proportion. “Pushed from the Wings is now an eBook.

IN the immediate aftermath of the Sydney Swans triumphing in an epic AFL grand final last year, pundits and punters alike asked if it was the best decider in the 115-year history of “our game”. Certainly, this far from fanatical Aussie rules follower, like many others, was transfixed by the late unfolding drama that day.
And with Sydney taking out the premiership by 10 points over Hawthorn, the emerald city was awash with red-and-white-clad supporters celebrating a memorable season, along with not a few out-of-the-woodwork hangers-on who will climb aboard the …

Ross Fitzgerald’s Erotic Novel of the Year is now available as an eBook. Drawing on classic themes of betrayal, death and metamorphosis, Ross Fitzgerald has created an enthralling contemporary mythology in Soaring.
This extraordinary novel moves between Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia, and Ireland, with its cast of flamboyant misfits playing out the eternal search for love and passion.
Rodney (hang-glider and merchant of erotica); Rebekah (19 year old Alcoholic’s Anonymous member, father unknown) ; and Michael (maverick motorcycling priest) are the three voices which speak powerfully, nakedly to us in Soaring.
SOARING is …

In Australia, nothing excites such passion as the tribal loyalties generated by Australian Rules football. Australia’s Game is a collection of essays and writings capturing the agony and the ecstasy of our great game from some of Australia’s best storytellers.
More than 50 contributors share their oval dreams in reflections ranging from witty and affectionate reminiscences and expressions of hope for the future, to statements of deep alienation and betrayal. Featured writers include Don Watson, Paul Kelly, Geoffrey Blainey, Gerald Murnane, Paul Daffey, John Harms, Emma Quayle, Barry Oakley, Peter Corris, …

ROSS Fitzgerald is one of Australia’s better known recovering alcoholics. He is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University and the author of 35 books, including his recent memoir My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey.
My Name is Ross chronicles Professor Fitzgerald’s struggle with alcoholism and other drug addiction from the age of 14 until he stopped drinking and using other drugs at the age of 24. Since then, Professor Fitzgerald has been sober, drug free, and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous , a fellowship which he still …

IT is unusual for an historian to endorse an historical novel – but that is exactly what happened recently, when Ross Fitzgerald, Professor Emeritus of History at Griffith University, publicly endorsed Noel Beddoe’s novel The Yalda Crossing. Mark Colvin interviews both men, inquiring about the relationship between the Wiradjuri people and white settlers in and around the Murrumbidgee River.
Listen to the interview

ROSS Fitzgerald is a well known journalist, historian and novelist (the Grafton Everest series). He is also a survivor of alcoholism, which led him to psychiatric wards, shock therapy, and suicide attempts. Alcoholics Anonymous not only gave him faith in the power to accept his condition, but the will to help others. AA is a community of people who have faith – in God, in humanity, in the power to overcome the weakest part of themselves.
Hear the interview with Ross Fitzgerald on ABC Radio, February 5, 2012
Click here to listen

“Wake up, Australia,” Grafton Everest exhorts viewers every morning on Australia-wide breakfast television.
This doesn’t please those he attacks like wily former premier Hoogstraden, whose biography Grafton is forced into writing.
Grafton’s day job as Professor of LifeSkills and Hospitality is under threat from the economically and sexually rapacious Vice-Chancellor Deirdre Morrow.
And Lee Horton, head of Australia’s newly privatised Secret Service (trading as SpyForce Australia) is worried too. He knows that Grafton has trouble lying.
And nothing is more dangerous than a man who habitually tells the truth.
Grafton Everest is a wonderful creation …

THE new biography on iconic Australian comedian Austen Tayshus has one particularly tough critic: its subject.
“I don’t like it, Tayshus says, leaving a comedicly deliberate pause.
“No, I do like it. I think they’ve done a terrific job of putting a lot of stuff in there which is untrue.”
Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace by Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy does have at least one positive review, from Tayshus’s mother, apparently.
The book explores the life of Tayshus, also known as Vaucluse resident Alexander “Sandy Gutman, from his early years growing up with his …

EVERYTHING about comedian Alexander “Sandy Gutman (aka Austen Tayshus) is a dichotomy. In life, he is a tea-totalling, erudite intellectual, the father of two daughters , a far cry from his foul-mouthed, incendiary, dark-glasses-clad on-stage persona.
He has a love-hate relationship with his audiences, which he is famous for taunting , recently he made a Japanese audience member get on stage and apologise for World War II in exchange for a cessation of tsunamis and earthquakes , and simultaneously describes his hero Barry Humphries as the gold standard of Australian comedy …

WHAT came to be known as the Australian Labor Party was formed in 1891 and by December 1, 1899, Queensland had the first Labor government in the world. Led by Anderson Dawson from the dual electorate of Charters Towers, it lasted only a week but it gave the ALP a valuable opportunity to get the dirt on the conservatives by examining previous governments’ files.
By April 27, 1904, the party’s progress was confirmed by the installation of the world’s first national Labor government. Led by Chilean-born J. C. (Chris) Watson, …