This title is available for pre-order and will be published on 1 November 2026

Praise for Emus Fly North in Winter

Raw, irreverent and unexpectedly tender, Emus Fly North in Winter is a distinctly Australian memoir of survival, courage, self-education and reinvention, told with disarming humour and the hard-won wisdom of a life repeatedly remade.

Professor Raul David, Charles Darwin University

A powerful story that doesn’t shy away from the realities of life. Honest, relatable and filled with the kind of life lessons that stay with you long after you’ve finished reading.

Alyssia Kennedy, 2026 Tasmanian Young Australian of the Year

A coming of age tale as Aussie as a BMX ride to the shops for chips, dim sims and a six pack of Coopers Green. There’s an Australia that many of us will recognise in these pages, and also one that is uniquely Paul Drewitt’s.

Aaron Tait, Author of Far Horizons: A Journey From War to Peace

Emus Fly North in Winter is a bold, beautiful breath of fresh air. With an abundance of genuine warmth, energy, and inspiration, Paul Drewitt’s memoir finds beauty and balance within the social complexities of life.

Dr Helen Street, University of Western Australia

Authentic, real, Australia’s acceptance of first nations people and the struggle and passion of writing. What a journey. Love it!

Susanne Gervay OAM, Australian Bestselling Author

How do you build a life when you have no idea what you’re doing?

Meet Paul Drewitt.

Growing up in rural Australia, Paul knows the kind of life expected of him. Leave school. Get a job. Fit in. Instead, he leaves school early, drifts into a disastrous butcher’s apprenticeship and spends much of his late teens drinking, smoking and doing very little at all.

He is, without quite realising it, stuck on the periphery of his own life.

Then something changes.

Not dramatically. There is no great revelation. Paul cleans his feet. He polishes a pair of Doc Martens. He starts budgeting. Gives up smoking. Picks up a book. Then another.

And slowly, almost accidentally, he begins to build a different life.

What follows is a funny, raw and distinctly Australian journey of sliding-door moments: back to school, across Australia, on to Japan and home again. Along the way, a boy becomes a man; a man becomes a student, a writer, a teacher, a lover, a husband and a father — always moving forward, frequently getting it wrong, and continually trying to work out how the hell to live.

Emus Fly North in Winter is about the friction between the life expected of us and the life we might choose for ourselves. About masculinity, mateship, family, ambition and the grit required to begin again.

But most of all, it is for anyone who has ever felt stuck, taken a wrong turn, wondered what might have been — or suspected that it might not be too late to change direction.

Because sometimes a life changes not with one enormous decision, but with the next small one.

Paul Drewitt is an Australian author whose work spans fiction and memoir. His novels include Urban Shadows (Ravenswood Publishing, USA, 2019), CatWalk (Wallace Publishing, UK, 2020), Karinya (Adelaide Books, USA, 2020), Street Sweeper (Adelaide Books, USA, 2021) and Vince Lombardi (Bluemount Publishing, USA, 2025).

Originally from South Australia, Paul now lives in Darwin, where he works in education. Emus Fly North in Winter is his first memoir.