Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute

The Reading Room
2024-05-27 13:30 - 2025-03-31 15:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Heritage Reading Room, Sturt Street, Ballarat Central, VIC, 3350, Australia
An Evening with Peter FitzSimons AM

November 20

@

6:30 pm

-

8:00 pm

Free

Minerva Room

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The Courageous Life of Weary Dunlop: Surgeon, prisoner-of-war, life -saving leader and legend of the Thai-Burma Railway

Peter FitzSimons

Australia’s bestselling non-fiction writer Peter FitzSimons AM will be in Ballarat to celebrate his latest book about Weary Dunlop.

Peter FitzSimons AM is Australia’s bestselling non-fiction writer, and for the past 39 years has also been a journalist and columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun Herald. He is the author of a number of highly successful books, including Breaker Morant, Burke and Wills, Monash’s Masterpiece, Kokoda, Ned Kelly and Gallipoli, as well as biographies of such notable Australians as Sir Douglas Mawson, Nancy Wake and John Eales. His passion is to tell Australian stories, our own stories: of great men and women, of stirring events in our history.Peter grew up on a farm north of Sydney, went to boarding school in Sydney and attended Sydney University. An ex-Wallaby, he also lived for several years in rural France and Italy, playing rugby for regional clubs. He and his wife, Lisa Wilkinson AM – journalist, magazine editor and television presenter – have three children; they live in Sydney.

The extraordinary story of the heroic doctor whose courage and leadership were a lifeline for thousands of Australian prisoners-of-war on the infamous Thai-Burma Railway of World War II – brilliantly told by Australia’s favourite storyteller, Peter FitzSimons. In September 1939, young Australian surgeon Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop was working in London when the dogs of war were unleashed. Signing up, he was commissioned a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) and sent to the Middle East, serving in Palestine, Greece, Crete, Egypt and Tobruk.
As the European war dragged on, an emboldened Japanese force captured Singapore and marched closer to Australian shores. Weary and over 3000 others sailed back to Java to fight this new enemy. At the No. 1 Allied General Hospital in Bandoeng, the Japanese were ready to murder the bedridden when Weary put his body in front of the bayonets. From that moment his leadership, ingenuity and selflessness became legend as Allied prisoners-of-war were sent to Singapore, Thailand and finally faced the hell of working as slave labour on the infamous Thai-Burma Railway. In the POW camps, tropical diseases, malnutrition, and the brutal work regime imposed by their Japanese captors meant the death toll was horrific. And yet, with little to no medical supplies, under extreme physical pressure, Weary Dunlop took risks and beatings to defy the Japanese and keep his men alive in circumstances that tested the limits of human endurance.
Weary was a gentle giant of a man. A boxer and former Wallaby, he could have been an elite sportsman but chose a different path – one that led him from rural Victoria to training as a pharmacist and then to medical school. World War II was the fire that fuelled this remarkable hero. His courageous leadership and calm endurance became beacons of hope to the POWs under his command. His name has become synonymous with courage, compassion and resilience. Now, Weary Dunlop’s heroic and inspiring story has been brought to life by Australia’s greatest storyteller, Peter FitzSimons.

This event is hosted by Collins Booksellers on Lydiard

Free

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This event takes place on Wadawurrung Country. Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute acknowledges the Wadawurrung People of the Kulin Nation as the first inhabitants and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we work, learn and create. Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal Land.

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