Anti-hero Everest reaches for dizzying heightsAcademic and author ROSS FITZGERALD reflects on the journey to his latest political satire “Pandemonium” and the series’ anti-hero Dr Professor Grafton Everest.    As some avid “CityNews” readers may know, my latest Grafton Everest political satire “Pandemonium”, co-authored with Ian McFadyen, of “Comedy Company” fame, has recently been published. In it, my anti-hero, Dr Professor Grafton Everest, is the first Australian Secretary-General of the shambolic United Nations. In its prequel, “The Lowest Depths”, published last year, Russia’s dictatorial president-for-life, Vladimir Putrid, is assassinated. Will …

Sober Days with Barry HumphriesROSS FITZGERALDBarry Humphries and I were friends for sixty-one years. We drank together, got sober together, and worked together.In late 1969 we were both admitted to a suburban Melbourne alcoholic and drug addiction hospital, Delmont. The wonderful lead psychiatrist there, Dr John Moon, who happened to be a Christadelphian, was a strong supporter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Delmont was the last mental hospital either Barry or I were admitted to as a patient.The night before we were due to be discharged, we got taken to a large …

It’s flooding in North Queensland. More than two metres of water has fallen in a week. Crocodiles are swimming through the streets. People are warned not to wear thongs in the clean-up. The Australian Defence Force has been brought in, and the days-old premier, Steven Miles, is on the ground making the regular flood speeches about mateship, bravery, the Queensland spirit and why the weather bureau didn’t predict the rain event.ueensland politicians can be made or unmade by disasters: as if the cyclones, storms, heatwaves, pandemics and bushfires might be …

The case for vaping as a least-worst optionby ROSS FITZGERALDMany Australians with a severe alcohol problem will die from smoking-related causes rather than from the effects of alcohol. “ACT citizens can have in their possession personal quantities of heroin, cocaine, amphetamine or home-grown cannabis without legal repercussions, but carrying mango-flavoured nicotine juice for vaping risks up to a two-year prison sentence and a $32,000 fine,” writes academic and author ROSS FITZGERALD. HUMAN beings have always used psychoactive drugs. Some animals and birds, such as elephants and parrots, occasionally indulge in …

AUSTRALIAN WOMEN HEROES OF THE PACIFIC WAR

SISTERS IN CAPTIVITY:
SISTER BETTY JEFFREY OAM AND THE COURAGEOUS STORY OF AUSTRALIAN ARMY NURSES IN SUMATRA, 1942-1945
 

by Colin Burgess

Simon & Schuster Australia, 2023

ISBN 9781761109089

RRP $34.99
 

Reviewed by ROSS FITZGERALD

This fine book, Sisters in Captivity, is dedicated to “the heroic nurses who lived this story but never made it home”.
 

Most educated Australians know of Sister Vivian Bullwinkel. But until the release of this lengthy and scrupulously researched study, my guess is that, as with me, not all that many readers of The Sydney Institute Review of …

Cut durry damage by vaping
 
by ROSS FITZGERALD
 
Although Sydney was once the epicentre of Australia’s HIV epidemic, it may soon become the first city in the world to effectively eliminate HIV transmission.
This remarkable achievement will be because of a focus on reducing the adverse consequences of risk rather than trying to reduce or eliminate it.
In other words, harm reduction. The result was the saving of many thousands of lives and billions of dollars.
Sadly, the outstanding success of Australia’s early efforts to control HIV is in stark contrast to Australian policy in …

Friends,

Pandemonium. is featured in ‘Fulbright in Focus’ November 2023.https://www.fulbright.org.au/news-and-events/The above links to my article on the Fulbright website, containing the full text, two reviews, and links to the publisher:

PandemoniumNew Book from Professor Ross Fitzgerald AM

“I am a very grateful recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio in the mid 1960s. Indeed it was being in America on a Fulbright that enabled me to eventually become a Professor in History & Politics and, more importantly to start a career as a writer of fiction and …

After I drove a car off the Menangle Bridge, near Camden in 1963, I was flown by air ambulance to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. When I arrived, Dr Miles Little was on duty as the surgical registrar. He and his team operated on me for almost eight hours and, as a result, saved my life.Even though I was then barely 19, he also was the first person to tell me that I was an alcoholic.This is because, after I was switched from a lengthy stay in ICU, I pulled …

Humphries family to boycott memorial                     by Briana DomjenFriends and family of late comedian Barry Humphries are “aghast” Richard Wilkins has been enlisted to MC his memorial — and some won’t be attending in protest.Barry Humphries’ “many lives” will be celebrated in a special state memorial at the Sydney Opera House next month, but an apparent difference of opinion between his widow, Lizzie Spender, and others, including Humphries’ daughter Emily, means many friends and family will not attend the event, which is …

Here is my speech at launch of the ninth Grafton Everest political satire, Pandemonium. The Olsen Gallery, Sydney, 6.30 pm, 14 November, 2023ROSS FITZGERALD   Many critics have claimed to know how Grafton Everest – the bumbling, overweight, teetotal Professor in Life Skills from the University of Mangoland, who’s the central character in all my political satires – got his name.Two claimants stand out.The first – A professor of linguistics who stated that, after analysing my first four fictions, it was obvious that Grafton Everest was a code for ‘Graft and …

                             AUSTRALIAN BOOKS
                            Rip-roaring Satire in Iota
Pandemonium by Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen
Hybrid  $32.99, 297 pages 
Reviewed by Rocco Loiacono
   This novel is the ninth book of the satirical series concerning Grafton Everest, a rambunctious, overweight, fictional academic who, as the book’s opening paragraph states, has been appointed, ‘once again through no ability, effort or desire of his own, to the position of Secretary-General of the …