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

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Taking my shivering trick at the wheel,
Froze that stiff I c’d hardly feel,
A-watching the greybeards all forlorn,
That roll from the Crozets round the Horn:
Taking the slack from a bucko mate
That showed his teeth at the Golden Gate
And bared his gums as we crossed the Line.
(He ought to be clove from skull to chine),
An ugly gun in his ugly paw;
Paying out for a crack on the jaw!
And that’s where I’ve been all the day, aha! 1
And when the question is repeated in slightly different form, the ship’s captain is
delineated as seed by his men – Binnacle Brown, a veritable Captain Ahab who
“holds the Bible fast in his fins / And beats the devil for all our sins”. These are the
poems which are usually included in anthologies – poems with the chanty rhythm,
such as “Lost and Given Over” with its opening lines of “A mermaid’s not a human
thing, / An’ courtin’ such is folly”; or “The Loading of the Pride” with its “Re-a-rally!
Ri-a-rally!”; or the Bunyanesque “McFee of Aberdeen” who’ll “take her out and bring
her home, or sink her, will McFee”. These are the poems that earned John
Masefield’s approval and praise, 2 but Douglas Stewart found them less authentic that
Brady’s bush verse, perhaps because he knew that Brady had never served at sea
while he had much first-hand experience of the bush. There is no doubt however, that
his experiences on the wharves made him thoroughly familiar with seamen, their
manner of speech, there interests and habits as well as their main duties and activities.
Stewart complains that “his salt-water ballads, which rarely tell a story and mostly
consist of the conventional rollicking farewells to imaginary ladies” are artificial, but
there are many ballads which do tell a story – “The Swede” and “The Cutter
‘Wongrabelle’” to cite two. Stewart is right however, in saying that there re some
poems which would fit his description, but these are interested in re-creating the
sounds of the sea and its traditional rhythms and flavour, rather than purporting to be
ballads of the narrative variety. 3
In reality the sea, the countryside and the city are inter-related in men’s experience.
“The Wool Roads”, published in the Sydney Mail with illustrative photographs of
wool teams supplied by Brady, gives a contrast between the city and the country,
points out how much more aware of nature is the country dweller, but both depend,
particularly in the case of wool, on the sea to accept the land’s produce and carry it to
world markets. There is really no interruption in this activity – merely pauses:
For, when the sheds are sleeping
Beneath a cloudless sky,
And Night, star-sandalled, wandered
Her velvet ways on high:
After, and coldly keeping
Lone vigil on the plain,
The teams stood dimly waiting
To take the roads again.
1 “Billy Boy”, The Bulletin, 2.11.1938
2 See page 236 **************************
3 Douglas Stewart and Nancy Keesing (eds.) Australian Bush Ballads (Sydney, 1955 (1968), p. vii.