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

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As well as the verse he was writing, Brady had published in The Bulletin early in
1922 several articles aimed at the bumbling bureaucracy which he had come up
against in his efforts to settle at Mallacoota. In the first of these, the heavyhandedness
of officialdom operated when Brady’s English settler, Brown, took up a
land-grant in the Gippsland area and applied for permission to feel a tree from a
government reserve to ger bark for his fowlhouse roof. The way in which the
encouragement of closer settlement and decentralisation can be militated against a
too-strict exercise of centralised power makes interesting reading. 1 This was soon
followed by another attack on the pomposity of officialdom in “The Tragedy of
Jones”, who was not very well received by the official whom he had gone to consult.
“Blending majesty with sacerdotal iciness, the hierarch of that particular bastion
allowed himself to utter the cabalistic formula; What do you wantr?” 2 Several articles
in the same year on a similar theme and a brie biographical article on politician John
Briggs 3 signalled to his readers that Brady was still interested in community and
political affairs. And this was further demonstrated when he persuaded a group of
Victorian politicians to visit Mallacoota to hear his views on the development of the
district. 4 Nothing really concrete came out of that visit, but the very fact that it was
made demonstrated the regard in which Brady was held in Victorian political circles.
The next year found him doing publicity for the Bruce-page coalition government and
for the National Union, but it could not be said that any real security had been gained.
Another trip to Queensland, partly financed by the Queensland Government, resulted
in the publication of The Land of the Sun. but even with this limited success it was
becoming more and more apparent that the promise of the energetic and idealistic
young poet of the 1890’s was fast being dispersed in the desert of forlorn hopes; he
was developing into a rather importunate and shiftless dabbler in many things. He
was ever ready to help others with advice or in more concrete ways b ut lacked the
singleness of purpose which along could bring him the success he yearned for and
perhaps deserved. He was far too which to display a truculence which was directed at
anyone with whom he disagreed. For example he displayed an unusual degree of
pomposity and conceit in his dealings with a surveyor acting for him and a neighbour,
evidencing a growing bitterness with life, a frustration with his inability to produce
what he considered himself capable of producing. His editorial and journalistic bent
was striving, in a degree, against the aesthetic and creative aspects of his nature; he
was in danger of falling between two stools. While his love of nature and solitude
were factors which in one sense enhanced his creative effort, in another they militated
against his achievement by taking him away from the mainstream of events and
intellectual life which were, of course, in the city. It was thus a vast relief to his
family when in 1924 he signed a contract with The Bulletin, negotiating sole rights to
his literary services for a period of twelve months at seven pounds a week. In
gratitude he wrote to Prior, recalling old times and stating: “We were all children of
The Bulletin, and proud of our literary heritage”. 5 This arrangement not only gave
him a much-needed relief, if only temporary, from poverty, but provided him with a
stability which, whether he knew it or not, he needed equally urgently.
1
“Brown and a Sheet of Bark”. The Bulletin, 6.3.1922
2
29.6.1922
3
“John Briggs – Saviour of His Country”, The Bulleting, 16.11.1922
4
A.E. Lind to Brady, 9.2.1923, in National Library.
5
Brady to Prior, 30.11.1923, in National Library.