A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

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The sea was to continue top hold a strange appeal for him throughout his life,
becoming in many ways a symbol – of Nature, of the universal mystery of life, of a
great unknowable, of a pattern forever changing yet ever changeless, a force
benevolent yet malevolent. Later he could not rest unless in sight of it.
But travelling Life’s Highway involved passing along through the plains and forests
of time, and the youthful Brady soon began to find his metier as an observant and
idealistic young man. At fifteen, rather tired of formal schooling, impatient to earn a
living and make his own way in the world, he readily acceded when his father
suggested he leave school to act as chainman with a civil engineer at thirty shillings a
week. Here he began in earnest to learn of Life. His firm was working on the
sewerage line from Bellevue Hill to Ben Buckler. He had to be lowered by winch
down shafts in a bucket, with one leg in and the other steadying the contraption
against the sides of the shaft to prevent rotation during descent. Accidents were
common, but “if you were hurt or killed it was your own fault”. He often assisted in
patching up victims of carelessness – their own or somebody else’s – before they were
conveyed by wagonette to St. Vincent’s Hospital. Nor did an outbreak of typhoid
help conditions!
In writing of his early experiences, Brady was ever anxious to set the scene for his
readers, who by then lived in a time apart. Realising the close connection between a
man and his social conditions, he usually attempted to give a correct sense of
perspective:
The invention of the internal combustion machine may be regarded as a
turning point in human progress. I am writing here of a world three decades
prior to that invention, when steam had hardly come into its own, when a
sailing-vessel from Liverpool to Port Jackson made a fast passage if it took no
longer than ninety days; when Australian towns were lit by kerosene lamps, or
not at all; when most bush roads were rutted tracks, along which bullock
drays and horse teams toiled through mud or dust; when coaches were still
occasionally held up by bushrangers, and few conveniences or comforts of the
present day were known to settlers. Then the wind blows inshore its salty
smell revives one memory picture; the odour of horse sweat and leather calls
up another. 1
After twelve months of this rigorous but educative experience, Brady decided, with
the paternal blessing, that this kind of work was far better if one could direct others to
do the dirtiest jobs and so he returned to school with the intention of qualifying to
become a civil engineer. He studied Latin, French, and Algebra, as well as the
subjects he had preciously taken, with Lyon Weiss of the Modern High School in
Liverpool Street, and Father Kelly of St. Aloysius’ Jesuit Day School – so
successfully that he matriculated. But he went little further; with the exception of
evening lectures at Sydney University in Philosophy and English, and shorthand at the
School of Arts, his scholastic education ended there.
1 Southerly, No. 1 1953, p 27