Showing results by author "Peter FitzSimons" in All Categories

In 1854, Victorian miners fought a deadly battle under the flag of the Southern Cross at the Eureka Stockade. Though brief and doomed to fail, the battle is legend in both our history and in the Australian mind. Henry Lawson wrote poems about it, its symbolic flag is still raised, and even the nineteenth-century visitor Mark Twain called it: "a strike for liberty". Was this rebellion a fledgling nation’s first attempt to assert its independence under colonial rule? Or was it merely rabble-rousing by unruly miners determined not to pay their taxes?

Known to millions of Australians simply as "Smithy", Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was one of Australia's true twentieth-century legends. In an era in which aviators were superstars, Smithy was among the greatest and, throughout his amazing career his fame in Australia was matched only by that of Don Bradman.

In the early 1930s, Nancy Wake was a young woman enjoying a bohemian life in Paris. By the end of the Second World War, she was the Gestapo's most wanted person. As a naive, young journalist, Nancy Wake witnessed a horrific scene of Nazi violence in a Viennese street. From that moment, she declared that she would do everything in her power to rid Europe of the Nazis. What began as a courier job here and there became a highly successful escape network for Allied soldiers.

The story of one man who had the guts to lose his gut. This is an audiobook that will finally help an ordinary bloke lose weight. Ever struggled with your weight? Or did you stop struggling years ago and let the pies win? Peter FitzSimons has been there and eaten that. In The Great Aussie Bloke Slim-Down, he will lead you through the fads that failed him, the diets that died fast and left him furious, and the ways his waistline kept the belt industry in business.

Sport was never meant to be complicated. No gibberish, no statistics, no talk of green-zones, black-zones, channels and percentage plays, no cheating, no grubbiness and certainly no ball-tampering. Peter FitzSimons celebrates the good, the generous and the kind in Australian sport, the genuine characters, the national treasures and the special moments when the losers were the true champions and the game, whichever game, was done proud.

All those great and not so great sporting moments that have made us chuckle, roll and roar with laughter, told in Peter FitzSimons' inimitable style. Putting his unique spin on our sporting life, Peter FitzSimons celebrates the tall tales and true, the outrageous yarns and the knockabout humour from the footy fields, cricket grounds, dressing rooms, bars and commentary boxes of Australia.

Great stories from around Australia to lift your heart, make you laugh and puff out your chest. In his very popular Saturday column, the 'Fitzy Files', Peter FitzSimons usually writes about famous sports men and women. But from time to time, he throws in stories taken from grassroots sport and daily life.