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

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Even his own proclivity towards political and topical doggerel, with its propaganda
against depression, unemployment and poverty, is lampooned. He takes society’s
sanctions about the need for cleanliness and constant washing of body and clothes and
urges the workers to unite against this further example of capitalist tyranny and
oppression, proclaiming, in part:
Sons of Labor wake to glory, up like men to do or die,
Days of dark oppression goad ye: at your feet your chains shall lie.
Break your shackles now or never, lift on high the bloody shirt;
On for gore and grog and glory, strike for anarchy and dirt! 1
Similarly, the poet’s habit of running away to country seclusion (Mallacoota?) is
lightly satirised in the account of the fellow who “feasted when he felt inclined” and
“O’er work and worry ne’er repined”. Like Brady he died unconverted:
And so, his days in peace when past.
He met a pagan end at last
Serenely unconverted.
And in the Bush, his bardic dust,
To buttercups and such I trust
Is suitably diverted. 2
Many topics come in for similarly light-hearted treatment. Divorce, the new woman,
new-chum jackeroos, bush-vermin (the iniquitous tick is “a small acrostic / Our clever
men can’t read”) 3 and countless other subjects are grist for the facile mill of his pen.
But perhaps he is happiest when writing about animals in an Edward Lear manner. A
collection was made of these animal poems in Native Notions, but as far as can be
ascertained it was never submitted to a publisher, which is a pity, for there are some
good examples of light, whimsical verse. One cannot read them without thinking of
Norman Lindsay’s The magic Pudding with its human-animals.
The native birds and animals in Native Notions are endowed with the characteristics
of men, but moreover usually have some moral human defect such as greed, overacquisitiveness,
fussiness or rudeness. So the greedy emu breaks into a general store
and consumes a wondrously-varied assortment of articles:
Adown his long, dishonest throat,
He sank an axe, an anecdote,
An auger and an overcoat –
Rapacious bird!
And then a jar of vinegar,
A case of stuff that cures catarrh,
A gallon of the best Three-Star,
He drank, I’ve heard. 4
1 “The Anti-Soap Brigade” Bird-O’-Freedom, 4.11.1893
2 “A Dusky Bard”, Native Notions manuscript.
3 “The Cursed Tick”, The Arrow, 15.8.1896
4 “The Emu and the Grocer”, Native Notions.