KRISTINE FITZGERALD & THE QUIET WISDOM OF FLETCHER THE KANGAROO
Talking to Kristine Fitzgerald and reading her delightful novel, Fletcher the Kangaroo, one thing becomes clear almost immediately: Fitzgerald has a quiet, steady belief that stories can help people live better, softer, less fearful lives.
On the surface, Fletcher the Kangaroo is a charming bush tale about a cheeky young kangaroo, but underneath it hums with the kind of warmth, reflection and spiritual gentleness that Kristine has spent years cultivating. And yet Fitzgerald didn’t begin with kangaroos at all. Her earliest ideas were for a human story, something more traditional, but then she had the realisation that changed everything. “Originally I planned to write a similar story using humans as the characters,” she says, “but one day it occurred to me that it would make the story more unique if I featured animals instead.”
It’s a decision that now feels inevitable. Fitzgerald grew up loving books where animals hold up a mirror to human lives, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Lion King, stories where a creature’s journey makes our own struggles feel clearer. “I think animals make powerful characters,” she says, and Fletcher is her proof.
A larrikin at heart
One of the joys of the novel is Fletcher himself, a little larrikin, full of spark, cheek, and a good dose of humour. He’s the sort of character who tests boundaries in the way only a young creature can: playfully, instinctively, and often unwittingly. “I wanted Fletcher to be a larrikin, often giving cheek but in a humorous and positive way...that was clear in my mind from the beginning.”
What changed wasn’t the essence of him, but the depth. As the story unfolded, Fletcher gradually became a vessel for Fitzgerald’s ideas about courage, belonging, and the moral edges we all learn to navigate. Through him, she writes about the important but quiet moments where someone (kangaroo or human) begins to question the rules they’ve always lived under. And this gentle kind of awakening, the kind that happens in the spaces between events, is what gives the book its heart. Fletcher is funny, warm, impulsive, but he’s also thoughtful in ways that creep up on you. The story grows with him.
Capturing the bush
One of the pleasures of Fletcher the Kangaroo is its sense of place. Fitzgerald describes the Australian bush with a painter’s eye: the long shadows of afternoon, the smell of dry grass, the rustle of it under feet, the hum of heat sitting over the land, the scent of eucalyptus. It feels natural, unforced, as though the landscape is always breathing alongside the characters.
But Fitzgerald says this wasn’t always part of her writing. “Capturing the landscape is a new thing for me. I’ve admired it in other authors’ works and decided to try it myself,” she says.
Stories that teach without preaching
While the book is warm and often playful, it carries a deeper purpose, one that Fitzgerald approaches with both clarity and humility. “Yes this is definitely meant to be a story that humans can learn from,” she says. “I wanted it to be fun but with meaningful messages about our place in this world.”
This desire to blend storytelling with gentle guidance is rooted in her long-standing interest in spiritual writing. Fitzgerald cites Louise Hay and Richard Bach as major influences, writers who use parable, metaphor, and compassion to explore bigger ideas. “Louise was my first spiritual teacher,” she says, “but when I discovered Richard Bach’s books, I really liked the way he used stories to convey spiritual ideas.”
While Louise Hay and Richard Bach come from different corners of the spiritual-writing world, but they share a similar warm, uplifting approach that has spoken to readers for decades. Hay’s work centres on healing, self-belief, the quiet power of affirmations; Bach’s stories use gentle fables and imaginative journeys to explore freedom, purpose and the bigger questions of who we are. What connects them, and maybe what is reflected in Fitzgerald's writing, is their invitation to readers to slow down, look inward, to be optimistic and insightful, to see deeper meaning in the world.
In Fletcher the Kangaroo, that influence is unmistakable. The novel isn’t a sermon, it isn’t interested in lecturing readers. Instead, Fitzgerald uses the rhythm of the bush and the innocence and then growth of its characters to open small windows into bigger questions. What does it mean to live without fear? What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to trust the path you’re on, even when it hurts?
At the centre of this is a theme Fitzgerald returns to often. “I hope readers will consider that death doesn’t have to be feared. That is my main goal, to help reduce fear of death. Fiction is a beautiful way to present ideas without coming across as being pushy.”
A writer motivated by compassion
For Fitzgerald, writing isn’t a solitary pursuit so much as a form of offering. She is deeply conscious of her readers, deeply grateful for them, and deeply moved by what stories can do in someone’s life. “It feels like a real honour whenever anyone reads what I have written,” she says. “And if I can help them view life more positively, or cope better with their difficulties, then I have achieved what I want to achieve.”
In a world where writers often speak of ambition, fame, or literary legacy, Fitzgerald’s approach feels refreshingly humble and profoundly sincere. Her work is grounded in care, in the belief that stories can lift people just a little higher. In Fletcher the Kangaroo, the message centres on reassurance, not a forced optimism, but a quiet trust. “I want readers to feel that everything is OK,” Fitzgerald says. “Even when they go through hard times, that their challenges are a part of a much bigger picture and that they are safe and protected.”
That feeling threads through every chapter of the novel. It sits in the gentle humour of Fletcher’s cheeky antics, in the warmth of his family, in the wide sky stretching over the mob. It’s the feeling of walking through country and sensing something vast and kind moving alongside you.
To the end and beyond with Fletcher
Fletcher the Kangaroo is a gently powerful novel that turns life in the Australian bush into a thoughtful exploration of innocence, conscience, and belonging. At first it reads like a simple fable about a young kangaroo and his family, yet Fitzgerald builds a world full of quiet emotional depth and moral clarity.
Fletcher's world is shaped by family: his steady, thoughtful father, his kind and grounded mother, his mischievous younger brother Miles, as well as the strict hierarchies of the kangaroo mob. Rules govern everything, but what happens when those rules are broken. Through Fletcher’s eyes we explore this as the Australian bush around him becomes vivid and alive.
The novel’s tension come more from character's moral awakening rather than any threat and peril. When Fletcher witnesses an act of injustice, he begins to realise that obedience is not the same as goodness. This soft shift from innocent acceptance to thoughtful questioning is handled with restraint, with Fitzgerald crafting a story that is as much about feeling as it is about plot.
"His heart was full. He was finally back where he belonged."
Fletcher the kangaroo: life and death is being released as a serial with a new chapter published every two weeks.
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