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

Leaving the University without graduating, Brady was “compelled to pick up the
wage-slave’s burden again” and secured a job as timekeeper on the Sydney wharves
for Dalgety and Company at a pound a week and a shilling an hour overtime. It was a
very strenuous time for him, but he learned a great deal, especially about the sights
and sounds and smells of ships and sailormen – knowledge that he soon embodied in
verse:
You can dunnage casks o’tallow; you can handle hides and horn;
You can carry frozen mutton; you can lumber sacks o’corn;
But the queerest kind o’cargo that you’ve got to haul an’ pull
Is Australia’s “staple product” – is her God-abandoned wool.
For it’s greasy an’ it’s stinkin, an’ them awkward ugly bales
Must be jammed as close as herrings in a ship afore she sails.
To which the authentic language of the Australian worker supplies the refrain:
So you yakker, yakker, yakker,
For the drop o’ beer an’ bacca.
For to earn you bloomin’ clobber an’ the bit o’ tuck you eat.
When you’re layin’ on the screw,
With the boss a-cursin’ you.
An’ the sweat runs like a river, an’ you’re chokin’ with the heat.
While “Hides and Tallow” recreates the smells of the wharves, “The loading of the
Pride” reproduced the urgency and romance of the competition between ships’
masters to be first to the London market with the cargo, as well as the dangers of
undue haste:
“Re-a-rally! Ri-a-rally! Stand from under! Mind the slings!
Hang it! Use yer hook, you duffer! Can’t you catch her as she swings?
‘Tarnal fool! He’s gone and missed it! H’ist away there, quick as y’ can!
Why the blazing Son of Thunder
Couldn’t he have stood from under?
Leg’s broke! Can’t move! Look sharp! Fetch along a basket – and a man!”
But the life of the sea is not all work, according to the young Brady’s vision. There is
the romance of the sea’s tradition (“The Ways of Many Waters”), its chanties and
rhythms (“Lost and Given Over”), its tragedy (“The passing of Parker”) and the
beauty of the sea:
And the sun streaks dim on the water’s rim.
With the heaving miles before,
And the still stars beam on the swirling stream
As she heels, hull down, once more.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
By the gull’s white breast on the rising crest
Of the far, unfathomed sea;
By the roll and dip of a royal ship,
By a thousand things that be;
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