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Thanks to Angus & Robertson for photo

LAWSON AT MALLACOOTA

With thanks to Denton Prout and the Mitchell Library

Henry Lawson was even able to find inspiration in the fall of a current worker’s newspaper “The Boomerang” and in its Christmas issue for 1891, three months before the paper collapsed., he published the poem “The Cambarooma Star” which is an actual history of the ill-fated “Boomerang”, There was something in the plight of a hopeless man making a last ditch stand that appealed to him.

Among the many other people moved by his poem was a twenty-two-year-old poet of Irish descent, Edwin James Brady.

When he read the “Cambarooma Star” he was editor of a paper called the “Australian Workman”, and being a bit short of copy, he reprinted the poem. Lawson, learning of his unauthorised use, went around to “thank Brady for stealing it”. Brady and Lawson immediately headed for the nearest hotel, and a friendship was made that lasted until Lawson’s death.

In October,109, Lawson was brought before the courts for failure to meet maintenance payments to his estranged wife, a sad situation caused mainly by Henry’s alcoholism. Into Darlinghurst jail he went, until some of his friends, alarmed at this situation “sent around the hat” to obtain money for his release. Mrs Lawson agreed to give up the monies due if her husband would leave Sydney and stop annoying her.

Thirty pounds was raised, and Lawson was offered three alternatives:

A tour around the Pacific.

A visit to an outback station.

Or a trip to E.J. Brady at Mallacoota.

He eventually agreed to go to Brady’s place.

On Friday 25^th February 1910 he left on the S.S.Sydney, bound for the port of Eden, with Tom Mutch(Minister for Education, NSW) as his companion. When the ship went through Sydney Heads Lawson was heard to mutter

“We fear no Hell here after,

We hope for no reward,

We always sail on Friday,

With thirteen men aboard”

By the time they reached Eden, however, his mood had improved, and he resolved to do his best to “pull himself together”, refusing to drink anything but lemonade when the party stayed overnight in the Commercial Hotel.

Brady was not quite sure what Henry’s reception of him would be as years before in reply to one of Lawson’s complaints in the “Bulletin” about the hardships of Australian Authors Brady had replied that “individuals and not their country was to blame for their own distress”. and that “literary pessimists were like sick people, looking at the world from a hospital window”. Lawson had taken this as a slight against his own deafness and ignore Brady for the next 6 months! It was not until the Mallacoota visit that the friendship was really resumed on its old basis.

Edwin Brady and his son Hugh, aged six, met Lawson and Mutch at Genoa. They had a rowboat ready to take the party down the river to the camp. With Edwin insisting on rowing all the way they set out, afternoon tea being taken at Smith’s at Gipsy Point and then on to Allan’s guest house for the night.

Next morning, they went to where the Brady’s and their children Hugh, Norma and Anthony were camped at Captain Stevenson’s Point “living like Gipsies”. Lawson looked over things with a bushman’s eye. He was always proud of his bushcraft and discovered that the family were missing a bush-broom. Rejecting the store bought one he set to work… with “enough tea tree to roof a fernery” and the “blue of the inlet before him”, devoting the whole afternoon to the task. It turned out to be too heavy for Mrs Brady to lift, so, rather than hurt his feelings, they swept the camp with the lighter broom, at dawn each day during his stay. When he left the tea tree broom wa placed in the fork of a nearby tree to ward off evil spirits!

Next day, when out fishing, Lawson, Mutch, Brady and son Hugh caught 24 schnapper in under an hour. As Mutch mentioned “the catch would have been considerably larger if the young Hugh hadn’t kept getting his line tangled and holding me up in the process”.

The three adults also went on camping trips, one to Harrison’s Creek, where Lawson insisted on making Johnny Cakes on a sheet of bark and baking them in the open fire. Brady managed to hide his share in a crack in the slab wall, but Mutch, sitting directly opposite the cook, was not so fortunate After eating as many as he could stomach, he stood up, hurling the rest out into the night, cursing loudly. Lawson, offended, ate all of his with obvious relish; and later the others wished he hadn’t. After a bout of terrible nightmares, which kept everyone awake, he could only be quietened by Mutch threatening to “brin” him with a log of wood. After sleep finally overcame Henry the others crept out into the dawn and stuffed the soggy remains down a near-by wombat hole.

On another trip along to Cape Howe, they stopped at Lake Barracoota and Lawson built a “proper bush camp” which took two days to complete. It was still standing in 1925 and may still have parts in evidence!

For the “Bulletin” in 1910 Henry wrote the following poem, part reprinted here:

“I’m staying at the lake-side home, down, here at Never-mind,

The small hand separator is the only change I find,

And there’s a girl with kin grey eyes and hair of reddish gold,

And she’s read somewhere in a book, that poets don’t grow old”

Editor: I have heard a lot of theories as to the identity of this lass with red hair. There are conflicting theories, one being Brady’s children’s governess. There is correspondence on this.

Henry Lawson returned to the city s changed man, sober and rested. He managed to stay “on the dry” for two years after the trip, but unfortunately returned to the bottle and finally died from the effects of alcohol in 1922.

“Ben Boyd’s Tower is watching

Watching o’er the sea,

Ben Boyd’s Tower is watching

Still for her and me.

We do not know the day,

We do not know the hour,

But we know that we shall meet again

By Ben Boyd’s Tower.