Ross attended Caulfield Grammar School, in East St Kilda, Victoria,[9] from 1951 to 1958,[10] where one of his teachers recognised and strongly encouraged his creative writing talents.

Ross was a tenacious and courageous Australian rules footballer who played well above his weight, and was a superb middle distance runner, excelling at the 880 yards (or half-mile), now the 800 metres.

[12][13] After several years, already convinced that he had the skill to become a creative writer, he decided that he should travel to the UK and Europe, in order to gain experience of the world and, hopefully, determine what kind of writing to which he would devote his energies.

[14] In May 1963, he left for Italy on the SS Galileo Galilei, and on that voyage, he met and was befriended by the experienced Australian professional actress, Elaine Cusick, perhaps best known at the time for her performance in The One Day of the Year.

[citation needed] By chance, Ross returned from the continent to England in October 1963, and had reached Stratford-upon-Avon on his UK travels just in time to see the Royal Shakespeare Company's first performances of John Barton's three-part adaptation of Shakespeare's historical plays, now generally known as The Wars of the Roses, featuring, amongst others, Peggy Ashcroft, Roy Dotrice, Ian Holm, Brewster Mason, Donald Sinden, and David Warner.

[citation needed] In order, he thought, to gain inspiration for his writing career, he went again to Europe followed the pathway of Ernest Hemingway through France, and Spain, spending time in Paris, partaking in the Pamplona bull run (on 7 July 1964), etc.

; and, whilst he gained a new understanding of Hemingway's literary accounts of his European experiences, he found himself wanting to go back to the UK, finish his business there, and return to Australia as soon as possible, work for a short while in his family's hotel in Portland, and then, having sufficient funds to do so, move to Melbourne, and earn his living as a journalist.

[20] 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 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.

Ross's emphatic legal victory did not receive a lot of publicity at the time; and many people today still labour under the misapprehension that it was Kit Denton's 1973 book that was the source for the movie.

In a 1984 interview conducted by Barry Renfrew, the Sydney bureau chief for Associated Press, Denton directly addressed the issue of whether the screenplay of Beresford's movie had been based, in any way, upon his earlier work.

He has completed a novel, a spy thriller, To Skin a Cat, which has been placed with a publisher; and as well, has returned to the stage, writing an entirely new play (working title L, V AND P), concerning Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, and Peter Finch.