“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.