the Adelaide Festival of Arts, would allow him to pour all of his efforts into his writing. As he was finding his feet as a writer, he supported his family by working for Frank Brady at his enterprise, P.J. Brady Billiard Tables. With the congenial atmosphere of Adelaide, and the financial security of working for Frank Brady, Ross's writing began to take off. His first play, Don't Piddle Against the Wind, Mate was accepted (in 1977) by the Australian National Playwrights' Conference; and, at that conference, he met Ray Lawler, who invited him to breakfast, offered professional support, and introduced him to John Sumner. As a consequence of that introduction, John Sumner, soon agreed to direct Ross's second play, Breaker Morant. Breaker Morant: Play into Movie Ross's play, Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts, which was first performed in Melbourne on 2 February 1978 by the Melbourne Theatre Company, was such a commercial and artistic success, that work started immediately to convert the script of the play into a screenplay. Ross worked on the film as an advisor to the scriptwriters, and the film was entirely based on Ross's play. The film was a top performer at the 1980 Australian Film Institute awards, with ten wins. It was also nominated for the 1981 Academy Award for the Best Writing (Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium). He wrote the play about Breaker Morant. it was adapted by three other writers into Breaker Morant, a film that received multiple awards and nominations. Among them, it was an Academy Award Nominee for the Oscar: Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for the screen writers: Jonathan Hardy; David Stevens, and Bruce Beresford. It was also a nominee for the David di Donatello Awards 1981 for the David, best Foreign Screenplay (Migliore Sceneggiatura Straniera), represented by Bruce Beresford. It is rated as one of the best Trial films of all time. It details a court martial of Australian soldiers, including Harry 'Breaker' Morant, by their British commanders in the aftermath of the Boer War in South Africa. The film details the tribulations of the defense counsel and the defendants, as they try to throw a wrench into the administrative gears of Morant's court martial. Anticipating the Nuremberg trials and the defense of "superior orders", the soldiers' main defense is that they were doing their duty as they understood it, and