Fisher grew up on a farm in the country town of Rockbank, about 30 kilometres from metropolitan Melbourne, one of only a handful of students at the small local school.
He later attended Melbourne High School before undertaking a computer science degree at RMIT (formerly the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology).
Though it originated decades earlier, HIV/Aids was sweeping the world in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Misinformation and homophobia were rife. Aids was labelled the “gay plague”, and initially named “Gay Related Immune Deficiency”. The spectre loomed large.
In 1987-88, when Fisher came out while at university, the ‘Grim Reaper’ ad campaign screened on Australian televisions, showing the personification of death bowling – knocking over men, women and children.