• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Institute of Australian Culture

Heritage, history, and heroes; literature, legends, and larrikins

  • Home
  • Articles
  • Biographies
  • Books
  • Ephemera
  • Poetry & songs
    • Recommended poetry
    • Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
    • Poetry and songs, 1901-1954
    • Rock music and pop music [videos]
    • Early music [videos]
  • Slang
  • Timeline
    • Timeline of Australian history and culture
    • Calendar of Australian history and culture
    • Significant events and commemorative dates
  • Topics

For the Senate: “Dryblower” Murphy’s campaign: Opening broadcast address [2 September 1934]

13 April 2014 · Leave a Comment

[Editor: The text of “Dryblower” Murphy’s election broadcast, published in The Sunday Times, 2 September 1934.]

For the Senate

“Dryblower” Murphy’s campaign

Opening broadcast address

Through broadcast station 6PR, Mr. E. G. Murphy opened his Senatorial election campaign on Tuesday evening last. Mr. Murphy said:—

“I want to speak to you to-night on the subject of the Senate elections, for which I am a candidate. My name, Edwin Greenslade Murphy, may convey to some, but not to all, that I am ‘Dryblower,’ of ‘The Sunday Times.’ When you pick up your ballot paper on September 15, you will see 13 names. Mine may be low down on the list — but it will be there. Opposite the name, Murphy, Edwin Greenslade, I ask you to put the figure ‘Number One.’ In your own judgment and honesty of purpose you can fill in the remainder as you think fit. That is your own business.

“Several groups of candidates are telling you not to vote for the other fellow, these are the antis. They are anti-each other and anti-everybody else. They are the Codlins and Shorts of the electors. They imply that if you do not vote for them, or the particular parcel or bundle in which they are tied or labelled, you will be politically lost. I am anti to no party, and anti to nobody. No creed or class has a mortgage or a prior right to be thought the saviours of our fellow men. No group has the right to glare over your shoulder at the ballot box, and guide your hand in electing your particular choice; I myself am playing a lone hand in this election as regards outside help. I have no committee, I have no secretary, no suite of offices, no organisers, and no typists. You, my listeners, are my committee and my organisers, I am content to let you judge my political fitness by my newspaper work in the past.

“First last and always I am a wholehearted Western Australian. I am proud of the fact that I love the land in which I have for so long labored. I am proud of the fact that I have trodden the tracks of almost every goldfield of the State, and that it has given me not only a living, but the friendship, the comradeship, and the appreciation of my fellow men. A writer, whether he be a political or social journalist, is but a reflex of your joys and sorrows, the successes and failures, losses and triumphs of the people whom amongst he lives and for whom he labors.

“This State has given me a companionship without which a writer is but an echo of himself, a puppet dangling on his own strings. You, dear people, have as much created me as I have created my work. The men of 1893 with whom I carried my swag, the present-day citizens, the lonely men and women of the outback, the widows and orphans who have inspired me, and the soldiers who saved for us civilisation, are but the wires of a harp on which God has given me the power to produce the harmonies of humanity. I am asking you to believe in me politically because you have believed in me poetically. I am asking you to send me where my pen as well as my voice will make itself felt in the halls of Canberra. I want to go there free, free and untrammelled, to do what I believe to be right and to do as I believe you would have me do. I do not want to be a puppet at the end of a string, one end at Canberra and the other in an office in Perth. Give me the charter to represent not only the people of the city, but the tired men and women of the farm lands, the prospector, the stockman, the timber-worker, and others who live far from the glamor and glitter of the lights. Let me help to save Western Australia from being a dummy on the chessboard of Lyons and Pearce and the rest of the Federal chair-warmers. They have sat too long in the cushioned seats of the mighty. You have sat too long on a bare plank.

“Four and thirty years ago I stood and strove with the late Mr. F. C. B. Vosper, to try and stem the flood of Federation. We tried in vain. My listeners, with us stood another rugged stalwart, the late Pat C. Hughes, a follower of Mr. Vosper. We three were stoned from the Boulder and Kalgoorlie. Our lives were threatened and meals refused us. Our leader, Mr. Vosper, spoke these words: ‘You reject my advice now, but you will come to me in time, when the Federal net is about you body and soul.’ They met his advice with cheap songs, brass bands, circus posters and fireworks that dazzled and obscured the issue. I alone am left of that group of three. Can you, will you, help me to pick up the work that brave man’s death cut short?

“Federation is at present bounded on the north by the Neon lights of Sydney, and farther north by the Sugar Bonus of Queensland. South of it is the Melbourne Centenary, and, thank God for it, on the west by the Nullarbor Plain. That stops Pearce and his political gang from coming here. I have backed my opinion and love for Western Australia, by putting all my sons on the soil. I lost all in wheat, wheat that the Prime Minister told us to grow, and grow still more. I am now sending those sons out prospecting to the goldfields which I helped to pioneer 40 years ago. I am sending them out to face the sun of prosperity along the tracks which I myself have trodden so long ago.

“I do not lay my pen down if you elect me, and believe me it shall not rust in the inkstands of Canberra. I do thank you, listeners all, for your patient hearing. Might I conclude with the words of an almost-forgotten English poet:—

“If you a public man would send
To sit amongst his peers,
One man should go and one alone —
The man whose heart has always known
Your laughter and your tears.”

(Signed E. G. Murphy, “The Sunday Times,” Perth.)

Mr. Murphy will be heard again from 6PR to-morrow (Monday), September 3, at 8.30 p.m., and again on Thursday, September 6, at the same hour.



Source:
The Sunday Times (Perth, WA), 2 September 1934, p. 26

[Editor: Corrected “treatened” to “threatened”.]

Filed Under: articles Tagged With: candidate general, Dryblower Murphy (1866-1939) (author), election statements, SourceTrove, year1934

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Australian flag, Kangaroo, Wattle, 100hThe Institute of Australian Culture
Heritage, history, and heroes. Literature, legends, and larrikins. Stories, songs, and sages.

Search this site

Featured books

The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, by Banjo Paterson A Book for Kids, by C. J. Dennis  The Bulletin Reciter: A Collection of Verses for Recitation from The Bulletin The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, by C. J. Dennis The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers, by J. J. Kenneally The Foundations of Culture in Australia, by P. R. Stephensen The Australian Crisis, by C. H. Kirmess Such Is Life, by Joseph Furphy
More books (full text)

Featured lists

Timeline of Australian history and culture
A list of significant Australiana
Significant events and commemorative dates
Australian slang
Books (full text)
Australian literature
Rock music and pop music (videos)
Folk music and bush music (videos)
Early music (videos)
Recommended poetry
Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
Poetry and songs, 1901-1954
Australian explorers
Topics
Links

Featured posts

Advance Australia Fair: How the song became the Australian national anthem
Brian Cadd [music videos and biography]
Ned Kelly: Australian bushranger
Under the Southern Cross I Stand [the Australian cricket team’s victory song]

Some Australian authors

E. J. Brady
John Le Gay Brereton
C. J. Dennis
Mary Hannay Foott
Joseph Furphy
Mary Gilmore
Charles Harpur
Grant Hervey
Lucy Everett Homfray
Rex Ingamells
Henry Kendall
“Kookaburra”
Henry Lawson
Jack Moses
“Dryblower” Murphy
John Shaw Neilson
John O’Brien (Patrick Joseph Hartigan)
“Banjo” Paterson
Marie E. J. Pitt
A. G. Stephens
P. R. Stephensen
Agnes L. Storrie (Agnes L. Kettlewell)

Recent Posts

  • To Australia [poem by Ruby Jean Stephenson, 18 November 1943]
  • [General news items] [4 April 1912]
  • [Australia has had more than its share of shipping disasters of late] [4 April 1912]
  • [Probably Professor Marshall Hall was right] [4 April 1912]
  • Gold-seekers of the Fifties [1 July 1899]

Top Posts & Pages

  • Taking His Chance [poem by Henry Lawson]
  • The Man from Snowy River [poem by Banjo Paterson]
  • A Book for Kids [by C. J. Dennis, 1921]
  • Our pipes [short story by Henry Lawson]
  • Rommel’s comments on Australian soldiers [1941-1942]

Archives

Categories

Posts of note

The Bastard from the Bush [poem, circa 1900]
A Book for Kids [by C. J. Dennis, 1921]
Click Go the Shears [traditional Australian song, 1890s]
Core of My Heart [“My Country”, poem by Dorothea Mackellar, 24 October 1908]
Freedom on the Wallaby [poem by Henry Lawson, 16 May 1891]
The Man from Ironbark [poem by Banjo Paterson]
Nationality [poem by Mary Gilmore, 12 May 1942]
The Newcastle song [music video, sung by Bob Hudson]
No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest [poem by Mary Gilmore, 29 June 1940]
Our pipes [short story by Henry Lawson]
Rommel’s comments on Australian soldiers [1941-1942]
Shooting the moon [short story by Henry Lawson]

Recent Comments

  • IAC on How M’Ginnis Went Missing [poem by Banjo Paterson]
  • Stephen on How M’Ginnis Went Missing [poem by Banjo Paterson]
  • IAC on The late Louisa Lawson [by George Black, 2 October 1920]
  • Percy Delouche on Freedom on the Wallaby [poem by Henry Lawson, 16 May 1891]
  • Phil on The Man from Ironbark [poem by Banjo Paterson]

For Australia

Copyright © 2023 · Log in