Peter FitzSimons: The Courageous Life of Weary Dunlop

Join us this Remembrance Day as bestselling author Peter FitzSimons shares the extraordinary story of a doctor whose courage and leadership became a lifeline for thousands on the infamous Thai–Burma Railway.

Young Australian surgeon Edward “Weary” Dunlop was commissioned as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps and later sent to Java. At a 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 and selflessness became legend.

In the prisoner-of-war camps, disease, starvation and relentless forced labour claimed thousands of lives. With little to no medical supplies and under extreme physical pressure, Weary took risks and beatings to defy the Japanese and keep his men alive.

In his new book The Courageous Life of Weary Dunlop, Peter FitzSimons uncovers how this gentle giant’s courageous leadership and calm endurance became a beacon of hope to the POWs under his command.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase with the opportunity to have them signed by Peter FitzSimons after the talk.

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About the author

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.

This event is free for Shrine Friends and volunteers.