In 2007, the two adventure-seekers walked the cold continent unsupported on foot and gained worldwide media attention.
Since then, Mr Fitzgerald has turned his feat into a business opportunity. Last week, he landed in Queenstown to speak at the Arrowtown Autumn Festival and to take his wife, Kate, and daughters Charlotte (4) and Ruby (2) on holiday.
''Its been a good chance to get the family down here too ... It's a no-brainer.''
Mr Fitzgerald is familiar with the area. This past summer, he spent weeks filming parts of television series First Crossings - a series in which he and Mr Biggar took the same routes and used the same methods that New Zealand's adventure forefathers had taken.
He said the show had been a great eye-opener for him, as well as the viewer, into what it was like in the early years of adventure in New Zealand, and the show, for him, was about ''paying homage'' to those pioneers.
''They were the Apple computers of the wilderness.''
He jokes about his own appearance on the show.
''They [the producers] thought instead of getting a celebrity, let's get someone who is confident in the wilderness, so that's when they found us. They might have looked for other people and then they found us. That's probably how it went - everyone else was busy, then they found Kevin and Jamie.''
Before walking the South Pole, Mr Fitzgerald was already familiar with physical challenges. He was an accomplished rower while living in Tauranga and in 2003 won, with Mr Biggar, the Transatlantic Rowing Race in record time, but he never saw this as something that would bring him into the limelight.
''For me, it was fun and incredibly tough - we did 40 days of rowing. We had rowed so many times in so many different boats so it was about putting all those training sessions into one. It was just normal rowing, really. I was proud of that, but I didn't think of it as being very different from the rowing that I had done.''
After this he began his job in a bank before gaining some inspiration from Sir Edmund Hillary, patron of the Atlantic campaign.
''So we got talking about these other trips he had been on and he talked about Antarctica. That's when Kevin and I thought: 'Well, wouldn't it be great to do something down there'.
''It couldn't be further from banking.''
Mr Fitzgerald is now his own boss and chief executive of Inspiring Performance. He said 40% of the job was about attending conferences and talking to varied groups, and the rest was coaching individuals, designing leadership programmes and getting out into the wilderness.
''I try to make it more fanatic and keep away from chronological order; I bounce between different adventures. One guy told me last night my talk was a bit like watching [the movie] Pulp Fiction - they thought they knew what was about to happen and then it changes suddenly.''
''Not everyone wants to go to the South Pole, I accept that. I don't blame them but one of the things I do want people to go away with is to feel positively challenged and questioning of how they achieve their own goals.
''There is something very special about helping someone achieve something that they didn't think they were capable of.''
He was not always into adventure, but his upbringing on a Gisborne sheep station and then an avocado and kiwifruit orchard in Tauranga meant he would rather spend his time outdoors than in.
He had never pictured himself as the confident motivational speaker that he is today, but then again, he never thought he would row across the Atlantic either.
''There's strange opportunities that come your way. Rowing across the Atlantic, that's not something that people normally think to go and sign up for.''
Asked what his next challenge would be, Mr Fitzgerald was cautious in the presence of his wife and said his two girls were quite enough challenge for the time being.
