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

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Then it is obvious that this local colour is perverted, for the Australian’s love of the
tall story is immediately evident. His father is introduced as the head of the
permanent military forces at Forbes, with the title of Governor-General (this was
before Federation) and when the deep snow there melted under the efforts of the
municipal hot-water carts, the resultant torrents carry the whole house down to the sea
vie the Yarra River. The eight episodes which follow contain wildest fantasy, yet
draw the reader into a suspension of reality and countless farcical and highly
improbably adventures. The narrator (his father calls him Septimus Titus), the
Governor-General and his wife, and Cumbo the aborigine are rather sketchily
portrayed; but gradually over the length of the serial a reasonably-rounded picture of
the principal figure, the Governor-General, emerges. The original purpose of
outdoing D. Rougemont is never lost.
Human foibles are always pointed out, as well as physical peculiarities. So when a
fearsome flying boa-constrictor is sighted it is seen to have the physical build of the
New South Wales Premier to which comparison the editor adds in parenthesis, “seems
incredible”. The boa-constrictor’s mouth was so huge that it was obvious to the
travellers that he “carried on business on the wholesale principle”. 1 In his attempts to
capture the monster and to dispose of it afterwards, the Governor-General shows
himself to be a man of courage, initiative, a capacity for great attention to detail, and
has a propensity for making money from many most unusual ways. He displays
inventiveness, resourcefulness and stoicism – qualities inherent in Australians, we are
led to believe, and ones rightly regarded as national characteristics. As the sonnarrator
says of his father’s enterprise: “He would have opened up a retail sand-paper
emporium in the Central Sahara if he got there.”
But if a sardonic humour, a tendency towards the telling of tall tales and an unusual
vitality and willingness to try new experiences, especially those concerned with
making money, are factors in the make-up of the average Australian, as exemplified
by the Governor-General, so also is the exercise of the pioneering assets of
resourcefulness and initiative, the ability to improvise in the face of emergencies
created by a breakdown of plant or equipment. It is remarkable the way the
Governor-General uses electricity filched from a passing cloud (using a conductor
made of good Australian barbed-wire) to power his boat “The Gospel Truth” and to
kill a sea-serpent; how he uses a passing albatross to pull his canoe over the ocean;
and using a still hastily compiled from pieces of wash-boiler, how he produces both
fresh water and, with the addition of maize, some whisky at the rate of a gallon and a
half a day – a truly enterprising citizen! One gains the impression that Brady is both
praising this inventive characteristic of Australians and at the same time suggesting
that perhaps it is made too much of. Surely, in the forms he had it take, he is outdoing
De Rougemont!
Brady uses his often-demonstrated interest in science and technology both to enliven
the narrative and to poke fun at the pretensions of scientists as a group. He gives
meticulous attention to latitude and longitude, to speed (which he wrongly quotes in
knots per hour) and to the then-current preoccupation with Darwinian theories of
evolution and natural selection by discovering an island inhabited by Missing Links,
upright creatures halfway between a gorilla and a negro in appearance and having
short tails which they attempt, in an embarrassed manner, to hide.
1 The Arrow, 21.11.1898, p.4