Courageous life of Weary Dunlop. Peter Fitzsimons. 2025.

In September 1939, young Australian surgeon Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop was working in London when the dogs of war were unleashed. Signing up, he was commissioned in the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) and sent to the Middle East, serving in Palestine, Greece, Crete, Egypt and Tobruk.

As the European war dragged on, an emboldened Japanese force captured Singapore and marched closer to Australian shores. Weary and over 3000 others sailed back to Java to fight this new enemy. At the No. 1 Allied General 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, ingenuity and selflessness became legend as Allied prisoners-of-war were sent to face the hellof working as slave labour on the infamous Thai-Burma Railway. Under extreme physical pressure, Weary Dunlop took risks and beatings to defy the Japanese and keep his men alive in circumstances that tested the limits of human endurance.