[2] Mother Gwen Fleming (née Lusby), also a doctor, had served as one of the first women majors in the Australian Army Medical Corps during the War.
[3] The couple met while serving at Concord Military Hospital, and married soon after the war, going on to have six children - Margaret, Paul, Justin, Judith, James and Peter.
After graduating High School, Fleming enrolled in Arts at the University of New South Wales, and attended part time acting classes with Hayes Gordon and Zika Nester at the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney.
In 1972, he joined Gemini Productions working in television and contributed scripts for The Godfathers, The True Blue Show (ATN 7), The Spoiler and The Young Doctors.
[5] In 1973, Fleming commenced part time studies in law at the University of Sydney, where he became director of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, with productions including The Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore and The Gondoliers.
[7] Other plays include adaptations of Émile Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames (The Department Store) at Old Fitzroy and D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, 27 August 2003.
In 2007 he was awarded the Writer's Residency at Arthur Boyd's Bundanon, where he wrote Origin, a play on the subject of Charles Darwin, commissioned by the Melbourne Theatre Company.
[1] In 2011, Fleming was commissioned by the Bell Shakespeare Company to translate Molière's The School for Wives and by Ensemble Studio Theatre and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, New York, to write Soldier of the Mind, a play about Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the Spanish neuroscientist.
Fleming's history of the Common Law, Barbarism to Verdict, was written for ABC/BBC television, and published internationally by HarperCollins with a foreword by John Mortimer QC.
Other publications include Fleming's histories: The Crest of the Wave (Allen & Unwin), The Vision Splendid and All that Brothers Should Be (Beaver Press).