Travelling towards us at the average rate of between 15 to 20 miles a day is a compact [soorage pacnet] of dynamic force known as Aidan de Brune. This extraordinary human machine has covered thousands of miles in his walk round Australia, and is now on the home stretch, somewhere along the coast of the Great Australian Bight, approaching South Australia's western border.
When De Brune set out he attracted no notice. A few hundred miles further on he was regarded as a homeless tramp, because he looked like one. In Queensland folks began to take notice of him, and considered him a crank, who would end up dead beat, in some back country town. When he reached the Northern Territory border bushmen wanted to know where he was bound for and if he needed any help. When he got well in after covering a couple of thousand miles, they asked why he walked when he could steal a horse, and offered to steal one, or several for him, or give him a few if he would prefer them as a present.
A Man of Parts. When they found that all he need ed was friendsuip, a drink of tea and a bit of beef and damper now and again, they reasoned with him and tried to induce him to settle down on good feed and water with them, and disregard the income tax.
They had discovered that he could extract from a shanty piano music that nobody knew was in it; could sing a good song, tell a good story, squeeze sweet sounds out of a concertina, give some very excellet advice to those in trevail, and generally act like a being from a better world.
In Darwin he tried to make peace between two rival unions, and only realised the impossibility of it when he discovered that the disturbing element was the Commonwealth Government, and that factional strife had been deliberately fomented to break industrial unionism in the interest of moneyed combines.
But he earned the good will of both sides as an honest hearted trier.
First Impressions. I had just come into Darwin with my wife out of the Gulf of Carpentaria, where we had been wafted about by sundry cyclonic disturbances when I got a wire from the "Daily Mail" asking me to look out for Aiden de Brune walking round Australia.
I expected to see a superman come striding in with a gun on his hip dominating everybody he met with the magnificence of his physique, and then I forgot all about him.
In a month or so a little man, who was positively droll, came stepping along the sleepers into Darwin, followed by a number of aboriginals, who wanted to know what tribe he belonged to. However they soon found out Aiden de Brune was a proper white man, and a high grade at that.
De Brune is under 5ft 6in., weighs under 9 stone, and has a face that looks weak, but he also has a will that is steel. Half Eaten 'Goanna. He has arrived at a station hut with a half eaten 'goanna in his belt, and left it with a few johnny cakes, and the undying friendship of the lonely stockman.
When you see him you want to get away from him. When you speak to him you don't want him to go away from you. He is a man and a gentleman up and down, and a library of information. He is a sport among sportsmen and a man of whom the Australian Journalists' Association should be proud, for he has not spared himself to get copy. Aiden de Brune has not finished his walk but should he never move another yard further, he will have put up a record that few, if any, will ever attempt to equal.
Northern Standard, 05.10.1923
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