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Max
Brown was born in 1916 at Invercargill, New Zealand, educated
in Melbourne (St. Kilda Park Central School and University
High School) and has worked as a journalist in Melbourne,
Sydney, Perth and several country towns, notably Echuca,
Bendigo, Lithgow and Kalgoorlie. His paternal grandparents
were on the Dunstan Gorge goldfield and his material grandparents
at Dunolly where the Welcome Stranger nugget (2520 oz)
was found. Max has also been a teacher, wharf labourer,
knockabout and film publicist. After service with the RAAF
in the Second World War he used his severance pay to write Australian
Son, the life of Ned Kelly, published along with
the Jerilderie Letter in Melbourne and London
1948, republished 1961, and again in three editions in
1980. He has subsequently written two novels, Wild
Turkey (1958) and Jimberi Track (1966), as
well as The Black Eureka, a history of the 1946
West Australian station Aborigines. Max was a member of
the Victorian Railways Institute and Perth YMCA gymnasiums
and a keen basketballer. He was the first to teach sport
to Aboriginals in what has since become Australia’s
iron export province, the Pilbara. Max Brown passed away
on Friday 19 September 2003, aged 87, from the effects
of a stroke he suffered three months previously. Max has
two books which will be published posthumously, one on
the life of George Johnston, author of My Brother Jack and
a fully revised and updated version of his number one bestseller Australian
Son.
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WRITINGS
ON NED| |QUINN TEA
Max
Brown
Buttered Toast: Stories and Sketches
Published in 1999 by Turton & Armstrong Pty Ltd
Page 22
The
occasion was the centenary of Ned Kelly’s hanging.
I sent father Brosnan, of North Coburg, the following steal
from an Irish poet and set out with my wife for the Quinns
in Nowra:
The
world did gaze with deep amaze
At the fearless man and true,
Who bore the fight, the freedom’s light
Might shine through the foggy dew.
The
Quinns, you say? Yes — descendants of Ned’s uncle
Patrick on the mother’s side, including Mrs Dot Keft,
Betty and Betty’s two daughters, one of whom lived
next door in Kiama. From Nowra we drove to Calymea Creek
followed by two helicopters from the Naval Base which gave
us the silly idea we were being followed. On arrival at the
farmhouse, a figure emerged from the woodheap and Dot proudly
introduced the ‘tribal elder and medicine man’,
Patrick William Vincent Quinn, and his two kelpie dogs. Paddy
wore a neat leather snapbrim hat with Irish aplomb and looked
like a horse-strapper. He told us that he’d been born
in Kurri Kurri, or maybe Cessnock, on 6 April, 1905, and
his father had lived around Scone.
“My
grandfather was Patrick John Quinn. There was some controversy
as to whether he actually married Nellie Gavin,” he
said. “Grandad had a sheep station out west, but swallowed
that. They gave him another place at Narrabri but he swallowed
that too so he finished his days at Murrurundi.
“Born?
I don’t know for sure, but I think six of the ten might
have been born in Ireland.”
Well,
thank God, Paddy didn’t swallow my misses and me. Instead
Dot put on the kettle. Dot is a tall woman, a tireless dog—walker
and well known to the Illawarra coursing fraternity. The
Quinn women are physically lusty and close. Bump one and
you bump the lot. Kate sits in grandma’s knee, then
the girls pat each other’s tummies and compare notes,
while Betty talks about the ballet and I talk about Ned burning
the mortgages and the laughter outside the Glenrowan Inn
on the morning before the battle.
Then
there’s an ‘incident’ like you get in one
of those movies when the priest raises his hand in benediction
and the gangster bursts into tears and surrenders the sub—machine
gun. When Dot pours the tea, Kate says she doesn’t
like too much milk, and Dot replies smartly, “This
is Quinn tea. It’s strong, there’s plenty of
it and you’ll take what you get.”
And
so we lifted our cups and drank a toast in Quinn tea to the
sacred memory of Ned and Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart.
Oh,
there’s not a dodge worth knowing,
Or showing, that’s going
But you’ll learn,
This isn’t blowing,
From the bold Kelly Gang.
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