General News
24 November, 2025
Peter FitzSimons draws a full house
BESTSELLING author Peter FitzSimons drew a packed audience at the Stawell Library this week, with locals filling the space to hear him speak about his passion for storytelling and his commitment to preserving the stories of Australian men and women throughout the nation’s history. Mr FitzSimons’ latest book, The Courageous Life of Weary Dunlop, chronicles the remarkable life of the heroic doctor whose leadership became a lifeline for thousands of Australian prisoners of war on the infamous Thai–Burma railway during the Second World War.
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 more than 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.
Students from Stawell West Primary School were among those who attended Monday’s session at Stawell Library, with Mr FitzSimons taking the opportunity to encourage their own love of learning.
“Get yourself into something you love, and the more you read and the more you write and the more you focus on your studies, the better chance you have of finding something you absolutely love,” he told them.
Reflecting on his path from journalism to biographies and large-scale non-fiction works, Mr FitzSimons said he felt privileged to bring forgotten stories back into the public eye.
“For stories like that, it's been my privilege to restore them to put them in print, and often they don't have anything directly to do with that on the cover, I don't care, I want them to live and breathe and be preserved.”
During his talk, he traced moments from Weary Dunlop’s life, from his early years in Benalla, to improvising medical equipment from bamboo while treating cholera outbreaks among prisoners.
“There was no better surgeon on earth to be dealing with it under shocking conditions to get the job done,” he said. To his extraordinary act of forgiveness toward Yi Hak-nae, one of the civilian camp guards, he said “I think there is a lesson in that for all of us. Weary was a man of extraordinary humanity, for me, it was an inspiration.”
One story focused on a soldier known only as ‘Scotty,’ who ‘refused to die’ and eventually made it home to Australia.
In a twist of fate, Mr FitzSimons opened the floor to questions at the event and was surprised to learn of local resident Marion Mackay, the daughter of Scotty Wallace, a POW from the Thai–Burma railway.
Without being able to confirm it was in fact the same ‘Scotty’, Mr FitzSimons has hope.
“I think I found Scotty, I love Scotty,” Mr FitzSimons said. “I'm really humbled by that.”
Read More: Stawell