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

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So an arrangement intended to make the adventures recounted by an Australian
pioneer, looses effect because of its artificiality; but the heavy-handed Brady satire is
obvious from the commencement with further allusions to literature’s preoccupation
with swagmen, saltbush, damper and the Overland Telegraph Line:
The Hen Editor laughed sarcastically. ‘It’s easy to see,’ he observed, ‘that
you haven’t read much. If you had, you would have know that when a
swagsman comes to a water-hole there is nothing left except some mud and
the bones of swagsmen who have been there before him, and have laid them
down and died of thirst in doleful numbers.’
‘But.’ I ventured, ‘how do they live?’
‘They don’t live,’ he said; ‘They all die, and the crows pick ‘em clean. They
die at various prices from seven and six a column to as high as thirty bob, and
a trifle extra for the crows!’ 1
Brady was not naive and it is interesting to note that this type of comment would have
no force unless he was sure that his readers would recognise the strength of the
current practice upon which he was commenting. Here was they other extreme from
the transplanting of English gardens, season, people and animals from the midnineteenth
century. If Paterson, Lawson and The Bulletin were out to create an
Australian Tradition in literature and to develop a distinctively Australian
consciousness, then the current of Brady’s thought would suggest very strongly that
by the end of the century the position had been reached that some reaction against it,
some moderation of it was in order. In a sense this was a necessary step and a direct
precursor of the more universal and international flavour of the young poets soon to
emerge – Fitzgerald, Slessor and others.
If it is correct to regard Brady as a kind of Australian Grandma Moses in the field of
verse, so he has many of the primitive’s characteristics in these prose serials. As he
and Cumbo hump their swags throughout the country, they regard with ever-fresh
eyes the typical (and abnormal) countrymen they meet, the conditions of the life
which is their lot, and the wider questions which arise about the purpose of life itself,
why it takes the forms it does, and why men undergo such vicissitudes, both natural
and man-made. The love of animals, particularly dogs and horses, is itself an
attributed he shares with countless Australians and he must be considered along with
Norman Lindsay in his ability to picture dogs and their characteristics, as his wordpictures
of Brutus and Leichhardt attest. While Brutus is all bluster and cowardice,
Leichhardt is an animal of spirit, even though permanently schizophrenic with his two
tempers – “one mild and refined, the other treacherous and vulgar”. The stirring
description of the fight between these two reminds the reader of Lawson’s famous
“loaded dog”. The scientific terms used in this account add to its mock-seriousness
and again show Brady’s interest in science. He terminates his account of this fight by
stating: “It was a scene of whirling chaos, such as must have been present in the
heavens on a somewhat larger scale when the moon was trying to break away from
the earth in the early dawn of history before we got responsible government in
Australia”. 2 His accounts of horses show his affection for them also, and as does
Narrabeen, they often assume human characteristics in their behaviour and
motivations.
1 11.2.1899, p.4.
2 1.4.1899, p.4.