Breaker Morant

With special guest:

• Peter FitzSimons
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

“Shoot straight you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it.” These are the last words of Breaker Morant as he sat on a chair looking at the firing squad about to kill him.

These words are well known in Australia as one of the few relics from the first time troops from the Australian continent went into the battlefield in the Boer War. But after reading Peter FitzSimons’ new book titled Breaker Morant the inescapable conclusion is that there are a lot of unknowns in the story of the Breaker. Many of the things we thought we knew are actually fictions usually started by the Breaker himself.

When we talk to the very well-known Peter Fitzsimons today we discover first of all who the Breaker really was, starting with his real name. He was English, not Australian. He left a trail of debtors and forsaken lovers around Australia but had nothing to return to in England. He was charming, a great story teller and entertainer. He was a man’s man in many ways, a hard drinker, great horse rider yet also a respected poet with many of his poems published. He was a friend of Banjo Patterson.

As we explore who this man really was in what is an absolute page turner it is easy to understand how Peter has become almost obsessed with the story. We learn about the Breaker’s exploits in a very different Australia towards the end of the 19^th century. We travel to the formation of the South Africa nation and in doing so we see the beginnings of the apartheid regime. The story also has enormous relevance today in view of the role of military law and the laws of armed conflict as practised in Afghanistan.

As always with Peter Fitzsimons’ books we get to look inside the characters and what a range of characters it is. The Breaker is the focus and he has told lies that were accepted even in Parliament. Sometimes he tells lies when he doesn’t have to. But there are also the good characters who fight against some of the practices of the British and the Boers. We learn of the heroism of the Australian troops and the courage it took to report what was happening in the field. We learn here where the scorched earth policy arose, the first use of concentration camps and guerrilla warfare.

This book will get you in and who better to tell us about it than Australia’s greatest storyteller making a welcome return to Dads on the Air.

Peter FitzSimons

Peter FitzSimons is Australia’s bestselling non-fiction writer, and for the past 30 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 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 Nick Farr-Jones. 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.

Song selection by our guest: Idiot Wind by Bob Dylan

Note: This program is an encore presentation of the one aired on 26th November 2020.

Podcast (mp3)