Aidan de Brune at Esperance, W.A., during his epic walk
around Australia.
Aidan de Brune, 1874-1946
AIDAN DE BRUNE was the pseudonym of Herbert Charles Cull,
who was born in London in 1874. He married in 1907, but in 1910 he left his
wife and infant son, arriving in Fremantle, Western Australia, in October. He
gave his occupation as "Printer." His early years in Western Australia are
obscure, but he is known to have kept in contact with his wife in London
until 1913. By 1917 he was living in West Perth; a year or so later in the
small coastal port of Bunbury, south of Perth.
By then he was using variations of the names Herbert Charles Frank de
Broune Culle, and working for the Bunbury Herald newspaper. Here was
published his first identifiable serial: The Pursuits of Peter Pell,
an episodic novel in 12 parts, set in Perth. The author was 'Frank de
Broune'. Another serial by 'Frank de Broune', The Nine Stars Mystery,
began in the Herald on 28 May 1920 but was left unfinished,
terminating abruptly on 5 November. The style of this unfinished novel is
unmistakably Aidan de Brune's.On 24 November 1920, he set out to walk from Fremantle to Sydney, on the opposite side of the continent, using the name Aidan de Broune. He claimed it was for a wager. Ninety days later he arrived in Sydney, having crossed the waterless and treeless Nullarbor Plain in high summer. He followed the Trans-Australia Railway Line, moving from fettlers' camp to fettlers' camp. The experience gave him meterial for a short story "Just a Woolly" (1922), which may, indirectly, offer an explanation of why he quit Bunbury and his job, and an unfinished serial.
In Sydney his name became fixed as Aidan de Brune, and he made a deal with the newly founded Sydney Mail. He would walk all the way around Australia, more than 10,000 miles, and the Mail would publish his articles on his walk. Thus, instead of becoming one of the many unemployed swagmen of the era, he had the higher status of employed reporter on a professional mission. This amazing walk, the first in Australia's history, took more than two years. It naturally included crossing the Nullarbor a second time, this time along the coastal route of the overland Telegraph Line via Eucla. By the time it was over, he was a celebrity.
Back in Sydney, de Brune embarked on a career as writer of newspaper serials. Such serials had been a staple of Australian newspapers, specially rural newspapers, for many years. First, however, he published a hardback novel, The Carson Loan Mystery, in 1926, which was not a serial. Then the serial flood began; he turned out three full length serial novels a year at his peak. Several of them were also published in New Zealand newspapers. He also used another pen-name, John Morriss, for some of his output.
By 1936 the flood of serials was over, and de Brune evidently retired from his literary career, aged 62. He died in a nursing home in 1946, a few months short of his 72nd birthday.
After his death, the works of Aidan de Brune disappeared into obscurity, although occasionally one of his rare books can still be found for sale.
In 2017 he was rediscovered by Terry Walker, an inveterate trawler of the Australian National Library's on-line newspaper resource TROVE, when he spotted de Brune's "autobiography" in the Australian Authors series. This included a list of his titles up to 1933. Once Gutenberg Australia and Roy Glashan's Library, both publishers of free e-books in the Australian public domain, became interested, the entire fiction output was rescued, sometimes with difficulty, from TROVE and from library sources. This also led to the discovery of De Brune's notebooks from his epic walk around Australia, together with a typed up book of the diary entries, held in the Mitchell Library in N.S.W., to be made available as an e-book with his other works.
The real identity of Aidan de Brune was uncovered when Project Gutenberg Australia's Colin Choat found an item in a 1938 issue of Sydney's Labor Daily, (successor to the Mail). N.S.W. police had received an enquiry forwarded from the Western Australian police. De Brune's wife in England was asking for information about her husband Herbert Charles Cull, last heard of in Perth Western Australia in 1913. The Labor Daily staff identified him promptly as Aidan de Brune, who had recently been seen walking his dog in a Sydney city park. No doubt this was passed to the N.S.W. police who advised the WA police, and a discreet silence then reigned.
The identity was further confirmed when two items in the Bunbury Herald were unearthed. The first was about "de Broune's" walk to Sydney; the second about de Brune as he approached Perth on his Great Walk. They both identified him with the Bunbury name better known to Herald readers as "de Broune" Culle. Research in genealogical resources confirmed all the biographic data given in this short profile. His son Lionel Charles Cull later migrated to Western Australia.
For such a short fiction writing career, de Brune's output was considerable: 19 novel-length works, one published exclusively in book form, seventeen as serials, and one as an unfinished serial; two novelettes published as serials; and 15 known short stories. Included in this output was a trilogy which increasingly evolved into fantasy, featuring Dr. Night, a drab and colourless little man with a central Asian background, using diverse schemes to fund the rebuilding of a long defunct kingdom of which he is the heir: Dr Night (1926), The Green Pearl (1930), and Whispering Death (1931).
Other serials not mentioned above are: The Phantom Launch (1927), The Dagger and Cord (1927), The Shadow Crook (1929), The Little Grey Woman (1929), The League of Five (1930); The Unlawful Adventure (1930), Douchard's Island (novelette, 1931), The Mystery of Madlands (1931), Find This Man (1931), The Grays Manor Mystery (1932), The Three Snails (novelette, 1932), The Kahm Syndicate (1934), The Flirting Fool (1934), Cain (1934; by John Morriss; republished in 1938 as The Framing of Inspector Denvers by Aidan de Brune); The Fortune-Telling House (1935), and Saul and the Spinster (1935).
The Grays Manor Mystery and the aborted Nine Stars Mystery (1920) were set in England. Douchard's Island seems to be set in North Queensland. The Pursuits of Peter Pell is set in Western Australia. The rest were set in and around Sydney.
With the exception of the aborted, incomplete The Nine Stars Mystery, all of his serials have been recovered, along with some fifteen short stories. They are being made available progressively as free e-books by Gutenberg Australia and Roy Glashan's Library.
AIDAN DE BRUNE — A BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY
(Earliest publication date identified, using date of first
instalment in case of serials)
Novels but not serials
1926 The Carson Loan Mystery
Novel-length newspaper serials
1920 The Pursuits of Peter Pell
1920 The Nine Stars Mystery (unfinished)
1926 Dr Night
1927 The Phantom Launch
1927 The Dagger and Cord (The Lonely Lady)
1929 The Shadow Crook
1929 The Little Grey Woman
1930 The Green Pearl
1930 The League of Five
1930 The Unlawful Adventure
1931 Whispering Death
1931 The Mystery of Madlands (The Murders at Madlands)
1931 Find This Man
1932 The Grays Manor Mystery
1934 The Kahm Syndicate
1934 The Flirting Fool (also as by John Morriss)
1934 Cain (Macleay Argus, by John Morriss) also as "The Framing of Inspector Denvers" by Aidan de Brune
1935 Saul and the Spinster
1935 The Fortune-Telling House
Novelette newspaper serials
1931 Douchard's Island (30,000 words)
1932 The Three Snails (24,000 words)
Short Stories
1922 Just a Woolly
1927 Who Killed David Condon?
1927 Adelbert Cay
1928 Meet Mary Cronig
1928 Mary Quite Contrary
1928 The Marrickville Murders
1929 The Empty Match Box
1930 Whiteface
1930 Mary's Little Lamb
1931 Voodoo Vengeance*
1931 Five Minute Murder
1932 Silver Bells
1933 Mary's Fleece
1933 The Three Cats (by John Morriss)
* Original title" 'All The Mystery of African Jungles Brought the Vengeance of the Voodoo to Jewel Thief.'(!)
Short Story Collection
2017 Meet Mary Cronig and Other Stories (contains all the short stories above)
Non-Fiction
1928 Fifty Years of Progress in Australia (Editor) *
1933 Ten Australian Authors
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