Copyright brisbanetimes
The author’s previous books have ranged in scope from poetry, travel writing, and even an ambitious search for the meaning of life. In 2019, he wrote a memoir about his childhood in Hong Kong during the 1960s. This latest offering is a sequel of sorts, picking up a decade later upon his return to Australia. It starts with 18-year-old “Browneye” (an unfortunate travesty of his name bestowed by fellow surfers), at home in the Gold Coast. Picture this dope-smoking, ratbag teenager who had to repeat year 10 twice because of classroom misdemeanours and a surfing obsession. And yet, the lad was also a bookish maladroit whose companions included Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence and Patrick White. Oh, and inspired by unrequited love and the lyrics of The Beatles and The Doors, Brown also wrote his first poem – printed on the back of his surfboard. From this juvenilia period of experimentation (in drugs, booze and verse), the book tracks Brown’s life as he serendipitously falls into journalism almost as an afterthought – when what he really wanted was to develop his poetic sensibility. His getting of literary wisdom was aided not only by emulating the style of his heroes, but by friendships with esteemed men of letters like “The Bard of Bunyah”, Les Murray, and “the Poet of Ordinary Australia”, Bruce Dawe. (It was fitting that Brown, the erstwhile disciple would, decades later, pen Dawe’s obituary in The Courier-Mail.) The title of this memoir could easily be thus: Confessions of a Knockabout Journalist and a Minor Poet, Brown’s peripatetic lifestyle in his 20s and beyond led him to work for numerous media outlets: apart from a stint as a radio copywriter, he reported for various publications and across different editorial capacities in and beyond his home state. There are amusing tales of his time in rural newspapers (think bull sales, CWA jubilees, dairy festivals) and plenty of celebrity name-dropping when he was a social gadfly-about-town, with encounters with luminaries including Split Enz, Australian Crawl, Manning Clark, Eric Bana, Alain de Botton and Barry Humphries.
