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

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Although he can avoid the common tendency to romanticise the bushranger,
recognising that outside fiction they were “mostly tawdry bandits who graduated from
petty thefts of horses and cattle to highway robbery and murder”, and had the
admiration of Miles Franklin for this attitude, 1 he can yet be mawkishly sentimental in
recalling childhood events and loves while crossing the Blue Mountains. Yet the
strongest common thread of the feeling they evoke for the people of the country.
Each volume abounds with characters drawn vividly and sympathetically by Brady’s
pen. Each contains vignettes of the Australian society of the early 1900’s revealing a
way of life, an approach to life, a code of values which constitute a considerable part
of the Australian character as its steady growth towards independent nationhood
revealed. Many country “types” abound in these books, but there are not mere
stereotypes; rather they are real, fleshy, individual people who wrestle with a harsh
environment, not always wining, but always displaying degrees of fortitude and
independence wholly admirable. Many of these people seem larger than life on
account of their eccentricity by city standards – an eccentricity which often
establishes their name and their identity to a wide range of friends. So the reader
meets Spare-me-days and Brummy, two heavy drinkers who are great mates, even
though Brummy sings himself to sleep every night with seventeen verses of the same
song. And Greenhide Jack, so named on account of his prowess with the stock-whip
and his construction of many articles from cowhide, quite child-like in his selfsympathy
when slight injured; and Ah Gum, and O’Grady the Irish settler and
countless pioneering wives and mothers treated as understandingly as Lawson wrote
of them. Some of these people are too outgoing, as the settler from whom Brady goes
to get water, but who keeps him listening so long, to his mate’s chagrin, that the
bacon is ruined. And when his mate demurs, he is sent within earshot and the tea is
cold. They wish him, as a pre-lunch deputation, on the relevant Minister against
whose Parliamentary ineptitudes he holds forth.
But not all of Brady’s bush people are hospitable and outgoing. One young man is
engaged in skinning a sheep when the travellers approach;
“Good morning,” I began pleasantly.
The man favoured me with a reluctant nod.
‘How far is it to Morna?’
He went on with his work, plying a very sharp knife with great
dexterity.
I repeated my question, loudly.
‘Dunno,’ said the man, ‘never bin there.’
‘Can I buy a loaf of bread here/’
‘Naw!’
‘Haven’t you got any bread?’
‘Naw; ain’t baked.’
More knife play.
‘Can I get any bread at Morna?’
‘Dunno!’
Slish-slash of knife over the hanging carcase.
‘Know if I can get any bread anywhere?’
‘Naw!’
1 Miles Franklin wrote to Brady (16.9.1945, in National Library) agreeing with this attitude, especially
in regard to Ned Kelly. “I am alienated by the attempts to make a hero our of him. He could have
grubbed and felled and slaved in the bush as my forebears did”. She wrote of the terror they inspired in
bush settlers.