Vale Dryblower Murphy –

“Dryblower”

His last copy spiked, and his last proofread.
The bard of a fledgling land is dead,
And a voice that sang of land and wave
Is forever hushed in a new-made grave.

He has gone the way that all must go,
But this is a truth, I’ll have men know:
The voice that sang in his generous heart
Deathless remains—a thing apart.

Men will write, in the days to be,
Songs and tales of “Ninety-three”
But none will dwell neath the self-same skies,
Nor walk where he walked, nor see with his eyes.

Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,
A hand grown cold, and a pen to rust,
And a lingering sense of loss and pain,
For the songs that will not be sung again.

by Jack Sorensen

Edwin Greenslade (Dryblower) Murphy (1866–1939)
by Arthur L. Bennett

Edwin Greenslade ‘Dryblower’ Murphy 1910 – Photo SLWA

Edwin Greenslade (Dryblower) Murphy (1866-1939), journalist, was born on 12 December 1866 at Castlemaine, Victoria, the tenth child of Irish-born Edward Murphy, plasterer and clay modeller, and his English wife Ellen, née Greenslade. He had five years of schooling at South Melbourne—his handwriting remained almost illegible—before going to work for his father in City Road. He spent some time in Gippsland and then used his pleasant tenor voice to join the chorus of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Murphy was attracted to the gold discoveries in Western Australia and he carried a swag 350 miles (563 km) from Perth to Coolgardie, arriving in 1894. He did a little dryblowing at Fly Flat, and enjoyed the nightly sing-songs around pub pianos. Murphy helped Billy Clare to launch his Coolgardie Miner newspaper, contributing a weekly gossip column, including jingles, using the pen-name ‘Dryblower’. This originated when a friend sent one of his rhymes to the Sydney Bulletin, saying that it had been written by a local Dryblower, Murphy was to use the name for the rest of his life.

He went north-east to the new find at I.O.U. (Bulong) where, with two mates, he struck a rich patch at the end of 1894, dollying gold worth about £2000 (a tidy sum for a penniless prospector). With one of the mates, he set off in March and floated the mine, the Esmeralda, in London. It slumped and he came home, but soon returned to England where he wrote for financial and social papers. In London Murphy enjoyed the theatre, especially Gilbert and Sullivan operas, in which he sometimes sang.  On 25 September 1895 at the Hackney Register Office, he married Emma Eleanor LOWNDES, daughter of a retired builder, and returned to Australia at the time of the South African War. Returning to parched red soil from lush England, ‘Dryblower’ wrote

‘The sun is flooding this gasping globe with myriad miles of flame’.

His crisp, humorous writing won him a job on Kalgoorlie’s weekly The Sun, where his chief regular feature was ‘The Mingled Yarn’. After a few years, he moved to Perth’s Sunday Times, his ‘Verse and Worse’ column containing gems of satire. Murphy worked indefatigably for patriotic causes and his poem, ‘My Son’, inspired by his son Harry’s enlistment, was greatly admired. Like many Australian humourists of the period, Murphy responded to and encouraged popular sentiments of racism and jingoism.

He published a novel about Coolgardie, Sweet Boronia, in 1904. Four years later his Jarrahland Jingles appeared; it was one of the first books of substantial verse published in Western Australia and contained a preface by C W A Hayward that applauded Murphy’s ‘playful banter’ and ‘stinging satire’. Murphy’s verses became better known than those of any other Western Australian writer and in 1926 he published ‘Dryblower’ s Verses’. In later years Mr. Murphy resided and worked in Perth, but his heart was always in the ‘fields’ and he lost no opportunity for a visit here, particularly on occasions of old-timers celebrations at which be was always a welcome guest.

This exuberant raconteur was thickset and ginger-haired with an aggressive turned-up nose; he was drawn by a cartoonist in 1907 with full drooping moustache, thumbs stuck boastfully in his waistcoat, straw boater and tight stove-pipe trousers (see below). He died of cancer at East Perth on 9 March 1939, survived by his wife and three sons of his five children. ‘Dryblower’ was buried in the Anglican section of Karrakatta cemetery, having left an estate of £288.
From: The Australia Dictionary of Biography.

Post Script from Gary Cowens:

Daily News 9 March 1939, page 13       “DRYBLOWER” MURPHY DIES

One of Australia’s best-known writers and journalists Edwin Greenslade (“Dryblower”) Murphy died at his home in East Perth early today. He was 71. For more than forty years “Dryblower’s” verses have captured the emotions, to use his own expression, of “the average man and his average rib” throughout this and other States.

A man of complex nature “Dryblower” had a characteristically varied life, on the stage, chasing the elusive gold and, for the greater part as a working journalist. Born in Castlemaine (Victoria), his boyhood was spent in South Melbourne where his father went when Edwin was one month old, to establish business as a modeller. When quite young “Dryblower” showed that he had a good voice and eagerly joined up with church choirs. Although he often admitted that he was a “young outlaw,” this early association with things religious in-stilled in him a distinct reverence which other qualities might have tended to obscure in later life.

It did, however, come out  strongly at times as in his outstanding verse “On Nights Like These” and the popular wartime masterpiece, “My Son.” As a young man “Dryblower” was associated with such renowned artists as Charles Kenningham, Miss Nellie Stewart, and comedian George Snazelle.

Gold Rush

The gold rush to Coolgardie attracted the young actor-singer to Western Australia and he “humped his bluey” to the Coolgardie fields. In 1894, a year after he came to this State, Murphy and others went to London in connection with their mining “show,” Esmeralda. He stayed there for four and a half years, joining up with a stage company, writing topical verses and taking more or less minor parts, following which his tenor voice was used to advantage in Gilbert and Sullivan opera.

It was while playing as a Savoyard that “Dryblower” met the immortal Gilbert, whose work, particularly the “Bab Ballads,” influenced his later jingling. It was while in London that “Dry-blower” married. He returned to Western Australia in 1899. There were five children, of whom three sons are living and resident in Perth. His widow also survives him.

“Big Brother”

One of “Dryblower’s” best known songs is “This Little Bit of World be-longs to Us,” written on the occasion of the visit to Australia of the American Fleet, and for which Murphy also wrote the catchy music.

His phrase, “We’ve Got a Big Brother in America” is almost as well-known as Kipling’s “Lest We Forget.”

During the war “Dryblower” was associated with many charities, and his “My Son,” printed on silk, sold in hundreds of thousands in aid of patriotic funds. The funeral will be at Karrakatta tomorrow afternoon. Arrangements are in the hands of Messrs. Bowra and O’Dea, and the graveside service will be conducted by Canon Collick.