A SOVIET-ERA medallion commemorating VI Lenin and the anniversary of the October 1917 Russian Revolution presented to a prominent Australian has recently been uncovered.
The proud recipient of the totalitarian bauble was former federal Australian Labor Party leader Arthur Augustus Calwell (1896-1973).
The medallion, given to Calwell in Moscow during a visit to Russia in 1967, is part of the official Arthur Calwell Collection housed at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House in Canberra. The collection consists of objects donated by Calwell’s daughter, Mary.
Calwell entered federal parliament in 1940 …

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

MOST people don’t “get” Austen Tayshus – and he probably doesn’t care because his audacity is what seems to drive him.
If a group of “holier-than-thou psychiatrists” can’t get a handle on the country’s most dangerous and subversive comedian, who is also an observant son of Judaism, then those who cast the first stone don’t stand a chance – particularly if they are in his audience.
Austen Tayshus (aka Isaac Cox) is Sandy Gutman’s stage name and Merchant of Menace, by Ross Fitzgerald and journalist Rick Murphy, reveals Gutman’s chaotic life and …

Click here to read my Alumni story in The Fulbrighter Australia, October 2011