Edwin James Brady

The most comprehensive biography of Brady available on-line is A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY (1869-1952) by John B. Webb. M.A.,submitted to the University of Sydney in fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1972: http://www.mallacootaaccommodation.com/documents/Bio2.pdf

Brady's first real work at the age of 15 was assisting in the construction of a sewage line. He then studied to be an engineer but dropped out of the university to take a job as timekeeper for Dalgety & Co. Ltd on the Sydney wharves; there he learned the life of the stevedore and indulged his romantic interest in all things having to do with the sea. However, he never worked as a sailor himself at sea.

At 22 he became the Secretary of "The May Day Post", a socialist reform journal which later became the publication for the Australian Labor Party.

Brady was a good friend and correspondent with the the first Australian Prime Minister Sir Edmund Barton.

Brady established a writers' and artists' camp at Captain's Point in Mallacoota (1909). During that time he was visited by Henry Lawson (who came to the area to recover from alcoholism in early 1910), Katherine Susannah Prichard and the playwright Louis Esson. All wrote passionately and romantically about Mallacoota and the lakes although none compare to Brady's description of the local sunset:

"I have never seen anything in Australia to equal some sunsets that have held me spellbound in Mallacoota. Picture a perfectly still sheet of water, three or four miles in width, with a number of little islets clustered in one corner, covered by green coast-currant and honeysuckle, with billowing ranges at the opposite margin; the Pacific Ocean spreading its blue floors eastward, and purple hills and peaks over in the west, where the sun is radiating bands of colour towards the zenith, green, blue, vermilion, and a hundred intermediate shades of rose and yellow!"

Brady continued to live in the area until his death in 1952.