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The Dizzying Heights
Ross Fitzgerald AM is Emeritus Professor of History & Politics at Griffith University. He is the author of forty-one books, including a memoir, My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey, and more recently the political/sexual satires Going Out Backwards: A Grafton Everest Adventure and So Far, So Good: An Entertainment, both published by Hybrid in Melbourne. He lives in Redfern, Sydney.
Ian McFadyen is a writer, actor and producer who has created a number of successful television series and feature films. He previously collaborated with Ross Fitzgerald on the Grafton Everest novel Going Out Backwards, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Russell Prize for Humour Writing. He lives in Narangba, Queensland.
Other Grafton Everest Adventures
Pushed from the Wings: An Entertainment (Hale & Iremonger, 1986; Corgi-Bantam, 1989)
All About Anthrax (Hale & Iremonger, 1987; Corgi-Bantam, 1989)
Busy in the Fog: Further Adventures of Grafton Everest (Pan Macmillan, 1990)
Fools’ Paradise: Life in an Altered State (with Trevor Jordan, Arcadia 2011)
Going Out Backwards: A Grafton Everest Adventure (with Ian McFadyen, Hybrid Publishers, 2015)
So Far, So Good: An Entertainment (with Antony Funnell, Hybrid Publishers, 2018)
Published by Hybrid Publishers
Melbourne Victoria Australia
© Ross Fitzgerald & Ian McFadyen 2019
This publication is copyright. Apart from any use
as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced
by any process without prior written permission from the publisher.
Requests and enquiries concerning reproduction
should be addressed to the Publisher, Hybrid Publishers,
PO Box 52, Ormond, VIC Australia 3204.
First published 2019
ISBN 9781925736304 (p)
9781925736311 (e)
Cover design: Gittus Graphics www.gggraphics.com.au
For Lyndal Moor Fitzgerald and Carl Harrison-Ford
Writing well is the best revenge.
– attributed to Dorothy Parker
The arts offer the only career in which commercial failureis not necessarily discreditable.
– Evelyn Waugh
All the characters in this book are purely imaginary and
have no relation whatsoever to any living person.
Chapter 1
Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that canhappen to a man.
– Leon Trotsky
Throughout his life, Professor Dr Grafton Everest had been in the habit of regularly examining the part of his anatomy that men of his generation referred to as their cock but which had peregrinated through a succession of names including dick, prick, tool, willy, wang, schlong, dong and old fella, before finally settling into its physiologically correct though unevocative title of ‘penis’. The observance of this ritual, indeed the observation itself, had been, for many years, achievable only with the aid of reflecting surfaces.
Accordingly, Grafton was now standing naked in a sunlit bedroom, amid a sea of strewn and rumpled clothes, peering at himself in a full length mirror, perturbed by the appearance of the organ in question. His concern did not arise from any abnormality in the appendage as such but from the fact that it appeared as nothing more than a small pink blur. This optical effect was not due, it must be stressed, to any kind of propeller-like rotation on the part of his penis but the simple fact that Grafton’s eyesight was now, like the rest of him, appalling.
Grafton was supposed to be going through his wardrobe in preparation for The Move, discarding any pants that could no longer effect the circumnavigation of his waist or were so stained as to be unacceptable even for the op shop. The worthy professor had also throughout his life exercised the practice of turning his pullovers inside-out prior to eating so the inevitable spillage would stain the inside rather than the outside of the garment. This tactic, which he thought was very clever, and had considered trying to patent, succeeded in keeping his knitwear clean on the outside – albeit smelling slightly of soup and gravy – but did nothing to prevent stains in the lap of his trousers, which blemishes were now so numerous and varied as to suggest some form of polychromatic incontinence. After an hour of dragging clothes on and off, Grafton had found nothing that would swathe his lower half except some blue tracksuit pants and he was quite sure that these were not suitable attire for the future President of Australia.
In fact, the surreal reality of the situation was that the Honourable Dr Grafton Everest, Professor Emeritus of Life Skills and Wellbeing at the University of Mangoland (since renamed ‘Excitement University’, now simply ‘Ex-Uni’), former State Premier of Queensland, former independent Senator for Queensland and current Chair of the Eminent Person’s Committee was in the process of moving to Canberra to take up precisely that position.
Grafton’s appointment as the first President of the newly minted Republic of Australia was not only unforeseen but inexplicable to almost everyone, including the half-naked professor himself. However, the event was not as puzzling as it first might seem, if one gave consideration to Australia’s history of managing change.
Among the first pieces of legislation ever to be enacted in the fledgling Australian Parliament was the Law of Unintended Consequences. It was this that led to such ill-considered decisions as each state in the Commonwealth electing an equal number of members to the Senate. This resulted in the island of Tasmania, with a population of around half a million citizens – the size of a provincial city – contributing twelve senators to the Upper House, granting the denizens of the Apple Isle, a disproportionate, and sometimes deranged, influence on the governance of the other twenty-five million Australians.
Similarly, while other nations unlocked vast economic wealth by criss-crossing their lands with railways, Australia had done likewise but with the novel variation of laying the tracks in three different gauges. The result of this initiative was that it was not possible to travel directly from Sydney to Melbourne by train until 1962 – one hundred and three years after the first railway tracks had been laid.
More recently the Federal
